I’m sitting here, asking myself – what have I learned?

Whether you’re reading this on a screen or paper (the old-fashioned way these days, it seems), you probably see my column series title, “Gettin’ Scruffy.” It describes what I intended to be a journalistic exploration into the scruffier sides of this city.

And as I’m winding down the semester, I keep thinking to myself, what have I learned?

It’s been a strange semester of writing. I spent a night with a graffiti artist in Fort Sanders and visited a t-shirt printing shop run by former Tai Chi instructors across the river. I found out what the zoo does with thousands of pounds of dung and talked over coffee with homeless U.S. veterans. Pit bull rescuers, drug addicts, regular ole people – they all taught me something.

Here’s what I guess I’ve learned.

• Avoid giving strangers money because they asked. Not because you think they will just buy drugs or something – because there’s probably a better option. Ask them if they need food or directions to a place they can get help and give them that instead. If they insist on money, you can’t help them.

• Around here, everybody respects veterans. It’s in the water, it’s in the moonshine, it’s in the school curriculum.

• If you’re a senior at UT, you’ve seen Market Square in a completely different lifetime than people who went to this University in the 90s. It was once considered to be, essentially, the foodcourt for TVA.

• UT has what, 27,000 students? Tennessee has 41 counties – entire counties – with less than 27,000 people. There are so many small places, especially in East Tennessee, that you never think about.

• Fort Sanders used to be the suburbs of Knoxville. Can you imagine kids running through the lawns, instead of homeless people rummaging for aluminum cans?

• Seriously though, every house party should use a separate bin for cans and bottles and leave it outside over night. That’s an income for some people.

• The Desiderata is a mantra that every college student should read at least once. Scratch that – it’s a mantra every person should read at least once.

• It’s easy to say, James Agee could have done so much more. He could have – he died young. But look at what he did. Look at what he left. Wouldn’t you want to be the kind of guy a city names a dog park after? Go sit in James Agee Dog Park on a clear afternoon. Reflect on the inscribed quote in front of the steps: “To those who in all times have sought truth and who have told it in their art or in their living.” Not a bad legacy.

• You wanna see the bowels of Knoxville? Easy. Close your eyes; imagine you’re someone who doesn’t travel or live in conventional ways; think about food, clothing, shelter; and open your eyes. See the bowels? The railroad tracks, the creeks, the highway underpasses. Look closer. There’s people in there, chewed up and spit out and beautiful just for living through it all.

• Elders have invaluable perspective. Befriend someone who remembers the lunar landing or the Beatles or the civil rights movement. My grandmother just turned 97 – the Internet has just come around in the last fifth of her life. She sees the world differently.

• Cigarettes bring people together in the same way that anything else brings people together – it’s got that, I’m not the only oneeffect.

• A lot of people in Knoxville think that we’re some Homeless Shangri-La. A destination for the homeless, the Disneyland of vagabonds and bums. They’re just flat out wrong – the data is out there. Most of the homeless people in this area cite a surrounding county as their last known address or hometown. It’s not like crowds of people are coming in from Los Angeles.

• Schedule morning meetings, afternoon naps and family dinners. People who do those things, don’t they always seem so balanced? But then again, nobody ever has it together as much as you think they do.

R.J. Vogt is a senior in college scholars studying literary journalism. The inspiration for this column comes from Esquire magazine’s monthly series, “What I’ve Learned,” which they conduct with real celebrities. R.J. is not a celebrity, but he can be reached at [email protected].