It was Ferris Bueller who made the timeless quote, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of the few movies that has inspired my insipid outlook on life.

I’m some kind of amalgamation of Ferris Bueller, Peter Gibbons and Jeffrey Lebowski. It goes without saying that I live the greatest life ever. Though, despite this apparent superiority, it is necessary to mention that with the overwhelming power of my own Zen frame of mind comes a sloth-like pace that is mellower than an awesome art instructor.

I mention this because it comes to my attention — here and there — that I am blissfully dull. I hear so many people speak of amazing aspirations, their dreams and hopes that span for miles and all the cliffs they will climb to make it somewhere amazing, from which the view will be magnificent and their life will be some kind of trophy in the end. That sort of immaculate existence seems a pretty common sentiment amid certain people I have met here at Kent.

It’s difficult to be so lofty all the time, though. I have met plenty of people who are fresh out of college, or some years from the fated halls of the university, and they tell stories of being stuck or somehow hitting short of their initial mark — that no sufficient amount of dreams will build that little airplane or give it gas to fly to that Olympic vision beyond those whittled fingertips.

I realize that for better or worse, I am somehow absolved of either of these outcomes. I realize that my sheer lackadaisical existence has somehow numbed me of true ambition in addition to crippling defeat. I drift along, sometimes wondering if I will ever even get a degree here, only meeting a familiar face every once in a while, the person who will smile at me, tell me they think there are more important things in life, and tell me that “D’s get degrees.” I can’t help but smile.

I shouldn’t be this way. Well — I shouldn’t be this way if I am here at college. I don’t know why I can’t get on the ball, I don’t even know if I have a ball in front of me to get on. I love writing, and I like the work I do here at the university, but I loathe busywork, and I am a nefarious student who drags others down around me. At this point, I am unsure if I am wasting time and money, or learning something really important about life.

Can it be both?

Ron Soltys thinks there’s a valuable lesson somewhere, but he can’t grasp it. Teach it to him at [email protected].