While the state of Tennessee threatens to rear up and tear itself in two as the most conservative legislature in the country continues to push back against its flagship university’s “political correctness,” I sit alone and struggle to write something meaningful.

“What if my whole column was just ‘Beer and go Vols’?” I type out the words, giving them careful consideration before backspacing.

There’s no way this is going to be meaningful. In lieu of that, however, kindly allow a self-indulgent stream of garbage to flow from my fingertips, and we can sit back, smile and pretend it’s good.

I can’t say I’ve learned a lot in college classrooms, sitting still for hours at a time, my eyelids drooping as a faceless professor repeatedly emphasizes the importance of whatever it is they are droning on about.

But I don’t know, man, I don’t care. I’m just going to cram months of likely irrelevant information into my short-term memory so I can pass a test the next day and get drunk on the weekend, standing stupefied in the club as waves of light and sound envelop me and wash away everything I might have memorized.

“Good to see you, man!” I give the Cool-Guy Sliding Hand Embrace™ to a wandering bro, who responds by sloshing Natty Light on my slick kicks. I may have seen that dude before, but it isn’t particularly good to see him now. And I’m sure I’ll never see him again.

“Goodbye forever,” I whisper under my breath as he stumbles into his next social encounter, the dialogue of which will almost certainly be drowned out by the deafening pulse of generic dance music, sonically crafted to prevent the formation of any substantive human connection.

It’s all good though. I’m having fun. “COLLEGE!” I shout, my tongue extended, my body flailing wildly.

But hold up. The thought hits me like something that hits someone really hard. What am I actually doing here — in this club, at this school, on this planet? And who am I even? What do I want? How am I going to make enough money to satisfy the price tag slapped on survival? How am I going to make a difference in this world? What happens if I simply fail?

These are the questions that stare every student in the face when they inevitably have a sleep deprived existential crisis in the wee hours of the morning. Years 18-22 are the most significant formative years in life, according to me, and no thinking individual can escape the reckoning that occurs when they start questioning who they are, who they want to be and how they fit into a turbulent society pulled from every direction by identity politics.

While working for the Beacon has not answered all of those questions for me (in fact, it may have only raised more), it has encouraged me to open my eyes and pay attention to the dynamics that shape this campus. I’ve learned more from observing and documenting four months of conflict — diversity office funding, outsourcing efforts, anti-transgender bathrooms, the Bible bill, guns on campus, the counseling bill, to name a few — than I have in classrooms over four years of college.

I’d like to thank the Beacon for giving me that opportunity —especially Tanner, for his dad jokes and pseudo-philosophical non-answers; Alahnah, for sharing her food and chapstick, taking pulls of my juice smoothie and being nice to me when I first began; and Katrina, for forcing me to say goodbye every time I shuffled out of the office, which I hate because it presumes my presence was important in the first place.

At this point, I could editorialize and connect the dots between the issues that our campus faces. I could theorize on the cause of the maelstrom of anger and hatred that is suffocating our state, but I won’t do that here or now.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. I’m pretty much done talking now. I’ve been done since before I started writing this column, but I felt obligated to do it (because Katrina made me). And now I feel obligated to have a moral to the story.

So if there has to be one, let’s go with: look around, try to understand the issues that don’t affect you and get involved in everything you can. You may learn nothing inside the classroom, but you can learn so much more about yourself and the world outside, on campus, in how you interact with people and how they interact with one another. It’s a miniature representation of the real world.

Shouts out to my boys Funk Sanders who will quite literally be disbanding upon graduation and shouts out to everyone who took a stand and fought for something they believed in this semester. Thanks to anyone who reads my words.

Good luck.

Travis Dorman is graduating with a degree in journalism & electronic media. He does not want to be reached. (But if you feel inclined, his email is [email protected].)