JACK all up in your beanstalk

A brief note; this was scheduled to run in the Exam Breakers' issue, but fell through the cracks of editorial transition. Generously, I have been allowed a spot in the much more widely read Commencement Issue! So here we go:

That's right, it's me! See, normally this would come as some surprise, but in today's era where journalistic integrity is of utmost importance, you already knew-because my anonymously comparing Dr. Moneta to a bloodsucking creature of a bygone era somehow undermined the news reporting of the other 98 percent of The Chronicle.

To wit, the only people who didn't know it was me by the third column either

A) Never interacted with me; or

B) Believed me when I lied to their faces.

But I'm not bitter; everyone who used to write this bad boy would talk about how hard it was to get feedback. It's a lot easier to get feedback when your name is at the bottom.

If you consider a sophomore Pi Phi backhand slapping you at Alpine a form of feedback.

First, a brief note about the "unpleasantness" of the Engineering column. That was in no way planned to coincide with the LNY event; to the persons who were offended by the timing, thanks for giving me that much organizational credit, but I suggest you get your paranoia complex checked out. Believe it or not, the column, which was about dating between engineers and Trinity students, was timed for Valentine's Day, which is actually on my personal calendar.

Ah, fame; thou art a harsh mistress.

To the meat, then. I had originally planned to include here a list of apologies. However, The Chronicle is only so many pages long. Canonical apologia can be found at the website dukepower.blogspot.com. What I can give here are some more major acknowledgements as they pertain to the writing of this column, and my Duke life in general.

They are listed in ascending phantasmagorical order:

To The Boys: It's been a hell of a ride and an honor. Thanks.

To My Editors: Contrary to what you'd like the readership to believe, you do exist. That said, thanks for all the times you wisely differentiated between "social commentary" and "guaranteed self-lynching". And for that time you didn't, screw you?

To Emily: Anything you can do, I can do better! Except play the guitar, lacrosse, lead an organization, be destroyed by viruses, beepball and save the world. Thanks for your early advice and espionage.

To My Family: Thank you so, so, so much. I suppose I also owe a thank-you to whatever economics professor forgot to teach my father the concept of "throwing good money after bad," which would be a great tagline for my college career. Alternatively, "You can lead a horse to multivariate calculus, but you can't make him learn it." Either way, thanks a quarter-million. Carson, you're going to have a Devil of a time the next four years.

To Dr. Moneta: Thank you for making this column possible. This is a funny, funny place to be a student. The column about you was, by far, the one I had the most fun writing.

While we're on the topic, however, I would like to admonish the undergraduate community: From here on out, nobody is allowed to make fun of the Student Affairs team until they search "Raheem Bath" in the Chronicle archives and read in chronological order. In the end, these guys are simply trying to keep us from accidentally (or intentionally) killing ourselves. They really, really, really, really don't want us to drink ourselves to death; and that nightmare happened not too long ago.

To Academia: A special thank you to Deans Johnson, Absher, and Simmons, and Drs. Chakrabarty, Fair, Massoud, Ybarra and Sorin. To Dean Johnson specifically: I had a column in the pipeline where the weird little locked cabinet in the second floor Perkins men's room was a secret Being-John-Malkovich-like tunnel to a student's head in the year 2155, wherein your cybernetically-enhanced personage was serving as Pratt University's First President For Unnaturally Preserved Life, and wherein you delivered the commencement address in Cameron Moon-door Stadium. I scrapped the column because it wasn't funny at all (who'd have thought that premise wouldn't work out?), but I fully expect it to be prophetic. Please don't let me down.

To Juliet: Thanks for being a wonderful companion and a top-notch sidekick. I'll miss you.

If I left anyone out, bite me. Writing this column has been an amazing experience; being unveiled was stressful but ultimately a bit of a relief. It was fairly obnoxious to have to sequester myself in my room for two or three hours every weekend, and leave people to speculate on what I was doing refusing to come out from behind my locked door. Anonymous or pseudonymous, it was some of the most fun I had in any given week.

To whoever writes this thing next semester: Even if you're not anonymous, create an alter ego. Give him or her a voice and a character; it frees you to write things you might not otherwise be comfortable saying. I make no claims about the separation of JACK and Garver over the past sixteen weeks, but I think that final scene from Fight Club pretty much sums it up.

In not too long, I'll be riding off into the proverbial sunset, not to return to this enchanted land of bees and stray cats for at least, oh, a few months. It's hard to believe four years could pass so quickly. Great educators became friends, and, slightly more often, friends became great educators; therein rests the wonder of this school-"the good of this place." Thank you all for sharing it with me.

It's been a magic journey and, on one hand, I can't help but feel I owe the University a debt I can never repay. On the other hand, $20.06 and call it even?

Good night, and good luck

--AGM

Garver Moore is grateful... but not dead, like JACK BAUER'S BIDET. He is a Trinity senior, and this his final column.