My senior year in college was not as terrible as my senior year in high school. But there really wasn't anything special that happened that year. At least, nothing worth writing about (that I haven't already done). I guess I was so busy concentrating on finishing all my requirements for graduation and working that I wound up spending a lot of time by myself. I didn't have any roommates, so it was almost like self-imposed solitary confinement for nine months.
At the beginning of the school year, I had a lot of doubts about what I was going to be able to do once I finished. There was one thing I knew: I was NOT going to go to graduate school. I figured that 16 straight years of education were more than enough for me. I'd had it with assignments and deadlines and worrying about whether or not I did something to wreck my GPA. Of course, I would go out into the real world finding out that there is no end to the assignments and deadlines, and if you fail, you could lose your job.
At the time, I couldn't see myself working full-time at the station. It seemed like anytime a slot became available, I was the last person to find out about it and they had already filled the position by the time I knew. So it came as a relief when I got a full-time position early in the Spring 1986 semester. That meant I didn't need to worry about what was going to happen after graduation. But it did mean that I had to worry about working overnights and attending school. If I hadn't dropped most of my classes, I never would have survived that semester.
I was lucky I got to stay in my room in the honors dorm at Curry Hall. The rooms were only supposed to be for full-time students, but they let me slide since it was my final semester. I don't think I could have put up having to live in a regular dorm with a roommate. (I did not need a college roommate #9.)
I will go into detail here about how I dodged a bullet by deciding to move into the honors dorm. I had lived at Lincoln Hall the previous three years. If there was one problem that characterized living there, it was that the building would run out of hot water by 7am. If you tried to take a shower between then and 10am, you would have to hop around in the ice cold water. It took that long for the water to stick around in the heater's reservoir to get warmed up. This was also a problem at Bernalillo Hall, which was the girls' dorm that consisted of the same design as Lincoln.
At Eddy Hall, which was across the street from Lincoln, there was no problem with hot water. They never ran out. Of course, this had to do with the fact that there were fewer residents there. However, the powers that be decided it would be a good idea to connect Lincoln and Bernalillo to Eddy's hot water tank. This was a construction project that continued through the Fall 1984 and Spring 1985 semesters.
When the Fall 1985 semester began, the project appeared to be a success and everyone had hot water anytime they wanted to take a shower. A few weeks later, those living on the 7th floor realized they weren't getting any hot water. Someone discovered that the 6th floor still had hot water coming to them. Everyone from the 7th floor went down to the 6th to take showers. Not long after that, the 6th floor stopped getting hot water, so everyone started going down to the 5th floor. This continued to the point in which there was almost no hot water ever for either Lincoln, Bernalillo or Eddy. But I always had hot water at Curry. That was probably the best choice I ever made in all four years of attending ENMU.
One of the interesting things about that final semester was Spring Break. It was the first time I stayed at college for just about the entire week. I remember going home the weekend before it started. I found out what my life was going to be like once I was on my own outside of college. Basically, all I did was sleep ALL DAY LONG! I would wake up a couple of times to eat and then go to work the overnight shift. I'd come back home and start the whole process over again. I do remember getting out of the dorm and seeing "The Color Purple" and renting "Prizzi's Honor" on VHS. I hoped that one day soon, I would be able to get out of the overnight shift because I found just that one week tough to handle.
So I really just have a few decent stories that I'll write about in the following posts. After that, I'll get into my adult life following college and my experience working at KZZO-FM. The rest of my life should go pretty rapidly after that. At least, that's the way it felt.
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