Bob Warring: Fear commencement

I don't know about the rest of you seniors out there, at least us who are graduating, but I'm dreading May 13 like the plague, or at least the next pop queen movie. When Commencement is over, then what the hell are we supposed to do?

Sure, some of you have jobs lined up, but what about the rest of us? Grad school? Law school? Med school? Will it be transparent to our families that what we're really interested in is buying more time, and that more education is just a convenient guise?

At any rate, the woeful job market isn't even my primary concern. I'm a History and English major; I never deluded myself into thinking that I'd get a "real" (Penn-ese for "requiring an Ivy League education") job anyway. I'm sure I can find a way for someone, somewhere to pay me to do something. My most recent prospects include traveling teddy bear salesman and teaching Russian children English in exchange for beads. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. (Well, maybe about the beads. Always with the beads.)

No, I'm not so worried about how I'm going to take care of myself financially, but how I'm going to take care of myself -- period. To put it pithily, I'm not so much worried about how I'm going to afford a vacuum cleaner as how I'm going to turn it on.

Maybe I'm alone here. (God, I hope not -- safety in numbers, right?) It's just that I don't know how to do any of that "maintaining-a-respectable-domicile" stuff. Nope, I'm a lazy, lazy, messy, messy human being -- just ask anyone I've ever lived with.

At home, I never do anything. I've never mowed the lawn, shoveled snow (excluding the neighbors' for money), made dinner, repaired anything or did laundry. Over the winter break, I actually came stumbling out of my room one morning awakened and frightened by a strange, dull roar. It was the dishwasher.

At Penn, I'm no better. My own room stays surprisingly quasi-presentable, but only because I never spend any time there. I wreak general havoc upon the common areas. The bathroom is always littered with my discarded razor blades and toothpaste (that's toothpaste, not toothpaste containers), and I can never be bothered to throw out whatever food I don't finish, even if it's a tuna salad hoagie. My slovenliness has gotten so out of control that now, I actually luxuriate in the messes I make. When I do throw trash at the trash can and someone inevitably points out that I missed, my two favorite responses are "The maid will get it" and "Did I?"

OK, so maybe I'm a little worse than many of you. But what about all of those other things bona fide adults have to look after? Car repairs and payments, rent or house payments, utility charges and about a million and one other miscellaneous bills. I'll bet even the most financially proactive Penn students don't deal with money on this level. For most of us, no doubt, our account management is limited to maintaining an operational cell phone and keeping BMG off our back -- and many of us can't even do that successfully.

How many of us even balance our checkbook? I know I don't. When I go to an ATM it's like I'm gambling. I put the card in, cross my fingers, and pray, "C'mon, big money. Big money, now." And if I actually do have money in the account, I assume it's a mistake and try to spend it before the bank can take it back. You just never know about those things.

And I have some news that may come as a terrifying and sobering revelation for some of you: there's no bursar bill after college. Sure there are credit cards, but those of you who really abuse your bursar capabilities know what I'm talking about. (I'm not so bad in this department. As a rule, white trash mistrusts banking of all kinds and prefers to pay in cash.) But you know who you are; you try to put things like cab fare and Big Ass Margaritas on your bursar bill and more than once you've asked Wine and Spirits if they take PennCash (whatever that mysterious currency is).

So whatever post-graduation brings you, don't say you weren't warned. About home maintenance. About financial responsibility. About the banks. About everything.

Bob Warring is a senior History and English major from Hanover, PA.

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