The end. Jim Morrison sang about it, Cormac McCarthy wrote about it and most reli­gions address it in scripture.

It’s some­thing that never comes to mind until it’s finally here. Maybe it’s because peo­ple are too afraid to address the final­ity of end­ing some­thing. Perhaps it’s the uneasi­ness that comes with hav­ing to fig­ure out what hap­pens next. Whatever the cause, humans are nat­u­rally reluc­tant to face the end.

But as I sit at my desk only two weeks away from my impend­ing grad­u­a­tion from this insti­tu­tion of higher learn­ing, I have no choice but to address the clos­ing cur­tain on my youth.

I know I’m only 23, but it seems like the end of my youth. That and the day when I am pur­chas­ing lawn main­te­nance equip­ment; that’ll be a depress­ing day.

So as I look back on my time at Ferris and the events that have tran­spired in my career, I look back and am glad to say that I have no regrets about how things went.

Believe me, there are things I would change in hind­sight. But like the old cliché goes, the col­lege years are some of the best in your life.

Think about it. College is the period of life when you are expected to mess up and fig­ure life out. What else is bet­ter than a period of time where you get a free pass for being an idiot and mak­ing poor choices?

So as I’ve made some good mem­o­ries, met some cool and not-so-cool peo­ple, and fig­ured out my career path, I’ve taken full advan­tage of my free pass and can say that I’m com­fort­able with the idea of fin­ish­ing school as I have no regrets.

I remem­ber load­ing up my crappy Oldsmobile in 2007 and head­ing down to Big Rapids with Led Zeppelin blar­ing on a warm after­noon in late August to begin my fresh­man year. I was excited to get out of the sticks and go to wild par­ties and to be inde­pen­dent for the first time in my life.

While some would say that I likely needed more super­vi­sion in my ear­lier years at Ferris, I made a lot of mis­takes but also had a lot of good times in my first year.

As the years have passed and the mem­o­ries have accu­mu­lated, I’ve seen rela­tion­ships change, my taste in music shift slightly and my pri­or­i­ties shift from party time to pro­fes­sional time.

I came to this school hop­ing to become the next Hunter S. Thompson, my jour­nal­is­tic hero, and I leave as Greg Buckner, a jour­nal­ist with my own style.

It was a quote from the good doc­tor Thompson that I can point to that could sum up my time in college.

“Life has become immea­sur­ably bet­ter since I have been forced to stop tak­ing it seri­ously,” said Thompson.

If there’s one thing I leave every­one with as I take my show to the west coast, it’s that you can’t take your­self too seri­ously dur­ing college.

There will be good times and there will be bad times. You’ll grow closer to some peo­ple and lose touch with oth­ers. But through it all, make sure to make it the best time of your life. and not let the drama and the other non­sense ruin it.

I’ll leave you all with some more words of wis­dom from Dr. Thompson and as you read it, I chal­lenge you to answer the ques­tion he presents.

“So we shall let the reader answer this ques­tion for him­self: who is the hap­pier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

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