It’s cold outside.

It’s 3 a.m., and I’m wide awake, battling insomnia, unable to convince myself that I need sleep before my 9:30 a.m. class on the Philosophy of God. No disrespect to the class; there’s just something incredibly attractive to me right now about staring at the walls. A coincidence that the song I’m listening to right now is “Four-Walled World” by Temple of the Dog? Maybe …

I guess I’m about to graduate from college, which hardly means a whole lot to me, since I’m probably going to grad school sooner or later anyway. So really, just like all my other “graduations” thus far, this isn’t an actual completion of anything to me so much as a bookmark. My education is not stopping, nor are classes finally ending. They apparently never will, damnit. I’ll be in “four-walled worlds” for quite a while yet.

Not that that’s a complaint necessarily, though I do hate waking up anytime before noonish. However, in the last semester of my senior year, I have reached a new, horrifyingly strange level I never thought was achievable: I like class. I love class. I enjoy going, discussing and-if I have the books for that course, having not spent the money on groceries/beer/cigarettes/God-knows-what-doing (most of) the reading. I find it incredibly amusing. In this age, where most people-including me, to at least some extent-are finishing up the bulk of their education, I finally take interest.

After a disgusting amount of my youth has been spent in school, I find that I haven’t really enjoyed my time spent here until it’s too late. Is this my way of saying “carpe diem” when it comes to education? Lord, no. I know most people probably can relate to the fact that I took four years of German in high school, and can hardly say anymore than “Wie geht’s” or “Guten Tag.” Look up what those mean, and I promise you won’t be impressed with my abilities. But, of course, that’s because this “education” has been going on for a long, long time. Anything that has continued thus far in one’s life is difficult to value, nor should it be expected to be.

Why am I writing this? I’m sure you don’t need another reminder from anyone about education. None of you needs another one of those messages so trite they should be on Hallmark cards; messages like, “You learn more outside of the classroom” (half-true-you certainly get more visible scars from it) or, “Your mind is a temple” (not sure on that one, awfully cluttered). One could make an Oxford-sized dictionary of useless aphorisms you’ve heard about education.

Perhaps there’s something in the weather that made me think this. Winter is, after all, a pretty miserable season. I’ve never fully enjoyed winter and have never been big on sledding or snowball fights. Winter kills basically everything outside. Look outside right now. Look at the first tree you see, and tell me it looks lively.

Winter has an adverse effect on everything around-and including-you. Who enjoys scraping ice off of their car windshield? Winter forces me inside, where I usually end up staring at a “four-walled world.” I’ve exhausted both of my guitars and all of my books (the librarian who told me that they’re good companions was a liar). Now I just sit and think about my education. I hope it’s leading me somewhere that I can make use of it. Or maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe this education never ends.

Actually, I hope it never ends. If, when I die, I haven’t learned anything new in 10 years, I’ll be very aggravated. The one thing I’ve learned since kindergarten that could envelop all of education, beyond that it never ends, is that it cannot. There’s always something new. Tomorrow’s new. Is it still going to be snowing, or can I go outside for longer than 10 minutes? I hope so. I don’t want to be staring at the walls all night again.

Is it fitting that the song playing right now is entitled “All Night Thing”? I believe it is. There’s more going on “all night” right now than me staring at the clock …

Marshall Johnson is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences.