My last article; A satirist’s goodbye

I have been contemplating what to write for my last Fool’s Gold article for YEARS. Should it be a quirky piece on the school and its students? Should it be a testimonial to how a certain staff member should have been fired years ago for a chronic history of brainlessness, harassment, too much cologne, and just being a horrible, horrible person to the core? Should it be a final, uplifting memoir to how great the school is and what it has taught me? Should it ask several questions about what the article should be about? Or should it simply be a heartfelt thanks to the school? I took the high road and went with the latter.

In late spring of 2005, I got a letter from MIT University in Cambridge, MA telling me that, though, I could have been accepted, I would not be attending their school that fall due to the more qualified inpiduals who had also applied that year. Backhanded and a little cryptic, I found it weird that they didn’t simply state that I had been rejected. Instead, I had the exact characteristics that they were looking for, but I wasn’t chosen. Starting to feel a little down about myself, I quickly noticed that the “rejection” letter, as I’ve come to call it, that I had been reading was printed on MIT letterhead UPSIDE-DOWN. Now laughing it all off, I quickly said, “Good riddance” to the notion of $40k a year and coincidentally received an acceptance letter from the Colorado School of Mines the very next day. Boy, what a fit it would be.

Just a short, hour drive from my home in Colorado Springs, Golden is far enough for parental independence, yet close enough for holiday and long-weekend getaways. My parents have been able to visit for EVERY SINGLE lacrosse game I’ve ever played here and even take the trips to Montana, California, Arizona, and so forth, to make sure I always have a fan. As my teammates have expressed to my parents as well, I am very grateful for their devote persistence over the past four-(cough)-five years.

As for this school’s out-of-classroom activities, I must say, there is no greater place to be on this Earth. In my time here, I have been a part of Men’s Lacrosse all five years, I coached Women’s lacrosse for a year, participated in Mines Little Theater, Mines Broadcasting Club, DiggerDial, Ballroom Dancing, helped DJ or do lighting for various school dances and performances with tons of great clubs and particularly NSBE, done E-Days events galore, and been a proud contributor of the Oredigger. As vast of a spectrum as those may seem, they tore my schedule up for years at a time! And for it, my grades have gladly suffered.

So, where is it that I go from here? Grad school? Work? A conclusion to this story? The answer is: I have no idea. I have been writing fake articles every Sunday for four and a half straight years and your perpetual blood-sucking for more has made me run out of ideas! Even though my brain is MIA at this point and I’m suffering from stage five senioritis, the perks of writing these limitless stories have included fooling hundreds of people at a time. I’ve had teachers explain to my entire class that, “the fireworks have been cancelled this year!” when I simply counterpoint that I wrote that story and it was all untrue. I have had several chances to vent to the entire student population that CSM will drive you to do insane things, like after I made a presentation to a class that was not my own. I’ve even received an extra point or two by mentioning my teacher’s names in articles completely unlike them or even with a good jumping point for a reference to them. I.e. Leydens, Zeles-hahn, Coad, and Seger–you all rock!

The long and short of it, though, is this: CSM, I thank you. I thank you for putting up with these shenanigans as your cries for more have kept the Fool’s Gold section alive over the years and with me (I think) at the helm. If you look at the top of this page, it says “satire.” Only sometimes true to that bold generalization, the Fool’s Gold section has ventured well beyond satire into all realms of comical genius over the few years since her birth.  Sometimes a fake article, sometimes a monologue to the reader, sometimes just a list of things that are funny- Fool’s Gold seems like the last place in print to be original. So, though I may be “passing on” to the other side (work), I wish you all luck in your future claims to “fun and funny” to break the CSM Homework Monster’s spirit. Starting with a Blaster the Donkey fake interview article, and ending with a rant about the Fool’s Gold’s legacy, this is Michael Stone checking out, saying, “thank you,” and I’ll talk to you again real soon… like on graduation day…

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