Well my dear friends, family and people I’ve continuously bribed to read my column: our time together has come to an end. I hope you have picked up two issues of this Bison in case you can’t continue reading through the tears on the page, but let’s just try to get through this together.
Deciding what was going to be the finale of Needless to Say wasn’t easy. Most season finales just make people angry with all the cliff-hangers and useless suspense, so I’ll try to instead use some classic movie endings to help myself and other seniors let go and move on in a more meaningful if not dramatic way.
Back to the Future. When Doc Brown shows up at Marty’s house and calms Marty’s fear of running out of road for the time machine, Brown simply says “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” Looking forward to the road ahead may seem uncertain right now, but that’s the beauty of it all. The idea that your career might not even exist yet is exciting, even if it is a little uncertain, but our generation is in a unique era in which we are, to an extent, enabled to pave our own way and to create our own path to wherever we want to go.
Spider-Man. (The old one with Toby McGuire — I know, I know). This next one isn’t really a “classic” ending necessarily, but I still like it. He dramatically narrates the last scene with “this is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I’m Spider-Man.” Well, this may come as a bit of a shock, but I’m not actually Spider-Man (though I do work for a newspaper and am sometimes underappreciated by the average civilian, but whatever) and I’m fairly confident you’re not Spider-Man either, but we are going to be graduates, which is almost as cool. It’s a blessing and a curse. Sure, we’ll have grown-up responsibilities but we’ll also now have the freedom and the ability to do big things. I think the “with great power comes great responsibility” line comes when we get a promotion or something.
The Wizard of Oz. In the final scene, Dorothy says, “Toto, we’re home … and you’re all here. I’m not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all. Auntie Em – there’s no place like home.” There are some who have made this statement about Harding in fewer (or more) words, and it’s difficult to ever think of leaving the place you have grown to love and that you have learned to call home, but we know that new beginnings are in store. Fortunately, Harding has Homecoming, other alumni events and donation requests in the place of a phony wizard to get us to come back.
Casablanca. The ending of all endings. A classic Humphrey Bogart film that signifies an ending to his time in Casablanca and his relationship with Ilsa, but also introduces a new beginning indicated by his newfound friendship in Louis. Goodbyes are inevitable, but usually bring new beginnings with new places and new people. It’s a clear example that the best goodbyes stay in our minds because they give you a hint to what is in the future.
I’ll be spending my final semester in Greece, so even if I can’t re-enact the final scene of Casablanca with trench coats and the plane running in the background on a foggy day (although now that I think about it, between the weird fog lately and the Harding jet it was practically meant to be), it’s still a new beginning in a new place, letting go of old friends and getting to know new ones.
So always remember to make your goodbyes somewhat meaningful if not quotable for future Bison columnists, and in conclusion, I hope you find comfort in what I’ve paraphrased from some of Bogart’s final words as Rick Blaine in Casablanca: “(You’ll probably get a job) maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday soon and for the rest of your life.”
