My days of sleeping in the Tiki hut are over

Associate Editor Braden Howell is a senior broadcast journalism major from Dallas.

Instead of describing some of the most memorable moments I have enjoyed in my five glorious years at TCU, I will instead mention all the places I’ve slept since the time I came to college: my bed, my roommate’s bed, my couch, my roommate’s couch, my car, the floor, the hall, the front porch of a house, the front yard of a house, the back porch of a house, a homemade Tiki hut, a stairwell, a dock and a boat.

Of course I have had a good time in college.

That’s what this time is for, right? Meet people you ordinarily wouldn’t have met, and do things you never imagined you would do.

However, I cannot express enough that there is so much more to it than that! You miss out on everything if you spend your college career in a drunken haze — but of course, you miss out on some good stories if you never experience at least one drunken haze.

But I don’t want to waste your time by telling you my stories, and I’m not an expert about college (well, not officially) so I’m not going to give you my advice. Rather, I would just like to provide my viewpoint on a few things.

TCU is a great school. If you don’t think so, then please leave. It provides a great education in almost any field you are interested in, and an environment that most students find pleasing.

But what about the TCU Bubble?

Of course there is a TCU Bubble, but let’s get real; there is also a University of Texas Bubble, a Texas Tech Bubble and a (insert any university’s name here) Bubble. What I have learned is that there will be a bubble anywhere you go because the feeling of the bubble is based on personal experiences. The university did not create the feeling of the bubble. We, the students, created it.

But enough about the damn bubble.

They say college is a time to find yourself, but most of us end up finding someone else instead. I can’t relate to the “finding yourself’ idea of college because I don’t think I was lost when I came to college. I didn’t know what my major was going to be, whom I would make friends with, or if I would find love, but I figured that if I kept moving forward through life, eventually it would all come together.

Fortunately, I was right. After many years of feeling like there would never be life outside TCU, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel. Everything has come together, and I am ready to move on with my life. As I pass into the realm of post-TCU life, I will take with me some great friendships, better stories, a wonderful girlfriend, and a diploma ... all of which I would not have without TCU.

So thank you. Thank you to the university; thank you to the people who worked so hard to put me on the verge of graduation; thank you to those who are reading this for making me realize I wanted to go into journalism; and thanks to the couches inside the Tiki hut for those nights I just couldn’t make it back to my room.

It’s almost time to start sleeping somewhere else.