IT'S DIFFICULT to look back on my entire college experience and attempt to summarize it in 600 words. So many experiences, so many people, so much Diet Pepsi ... yet I find that most of the basic truths I encountered were paralleled in my comic strip. No, I don't mean that I just dumped events from my life into Crazy Eskimo. Rather, I ran into the same themes when I was drawing my strip as when I was going through my college life.
For instance, you never know who's watching what you're doing. Nothing brightened my day more than when someone would compliment a strip that ran a week prior or when I would be introduced to someone who recognized my strip from my name. Sometimes, it came from someone I never expected would even touch the comics page, let alone read my comic. Those moments turned a routine action, such as drawing my comic strip, into something special.
Similarly, occasionally a friend would recognize extra effort I had put into something, say a prop for a date function or a section of a group project. Even though at the time I didn't think anyone would notice, I realized that extra time I spent mattered. If you're going to do something, you should commit yourself to it fully, or the time you do it halfway might be the only time someone notices it.
The people and events that will be influential in your life aren't the ones you'd expect. When I was first starting out with Crazy Eskimo, I tried to plan out who would play what role and such. Yet as time went on, sometimes the characters that played the biggest roles started out with just bit parts, but I used them more and more because they just resonated with me more. For one, Malik Ponce started out as a character in one-liners about E-schoolers, but grew into one of my biggest supporting characters.
Likewise, people who I met seemingly by chance ended up being some of my closest friends. For example, I met my friend Bahar because we both happened to work on the same days down in the basement and would bug each other while the other was trying to actually get his work done. We saw each other just an hour or two a week, but after our terms ended, our friendship didn't. Also, although Meredith and I were on The Cavalier Daily's junior board together, we didn't have much contact since I worked a day shift and she had a night one. Yet, because she always came by the graphics desk to say hi on her way to our 3 p.m. meetings, I now have a friend who I know I can always go to when I need someone to talk to.
Furthermore, there were a number of girls whom I met, thinking that this was the girl who would be the one in my life. Yet, it was Sarah, who I just danced with one night, who I met when I wasn't looking for anyone, who became near and dear to my heart because of her tender kindness.
Finally, each day comes but once. Over the course of three years, there were a number of storylines that I half-fleshed out, characters that I concocted but didn't use, and issues that I wanted to tackle, but didn't. I always assumed I would work them in eventually. Yet, when the end came, I was scrambling to include half the strips I wanted to draw to close everything out. Similarly, as I write this, I'm poised to enter my last finals period, and I still haven't done everything I want to before I graduate. I certainly had ample opportunities over the course of four years, but I got lost in the day-to-day stuff. An hour or two less sleep occasionally to do something crazy with your friends won't kill you, and "The Simpsons" and "Friends" reruns will be with us forever. You have four years at the University. Live them.
(Matt Oliver was a 1999-2001 graphics editor and a 1998-2002 cartoonist.)
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