Done! Done! Done!

My academic career launched on September 9, 1990, in Mrs. Blaine's pre-kindergarten class. From there, I endured eighteen years of academic rigor until I retired from academia on August 1, 2008 after Dr. Estelami's Marketing of Financial Services MBA class. With a little help from AP classes in high school and a marvelous summer study abroad program in London, I managed to finish my bachelor's in seven semesters and my master's in an additional two. Mind you, I am not gloating at all. But reflecting on the whole journey begs the question, "What the heck kind of masochist am I, anyway?"

I now have fifty-one days of freedom until I begin working full-time. What's a boy to do? Well, first of all, there has been lying on my floor since June an untouched twenty pound box of CPA review materials. I also plan on finishing John McCain's second memoir Worth the Fighting For. Watching MSNBC until I'm blue in the face and can't hear the words "hardball" or "countdown" without turning violently ill is also an aspiration. I also have this little thing called a "gym membership" which has served me well so far, but I figure I should continue the habit of working out regularly before I'm stuck in an audit room for ten hours a day with Three Musketeers bars and Starbucks fat-accinos. Six weeks from tomorrow is the half-marathon in my native borough, at which I plan on finishing in a personal best 1:55.

Then there's this little thing called an "apartment" that has been breathing down my neck. The easy way out of this dilemma would be to stay at home, rent-free, which my parents would fully endorse and would be quite acceptable as they feed me quite full and are very good people to be around. However, the commute from midtown to my house during normal hours averages an hour, and on weekends when I'm carousing the town I can expect to crawl into bed at 4am if I leave a bar at 2. Also, not to invoke the "well if everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you" maxim, but it would be slightly strange to be the only one among my colleagues who still lives in his or her childhood home.

Let summer begin.