Advice for awkward people

Dear Evan,

I’m a recent graduate and I have a bit of a dilemma; I could use your sage advice. The Stockholm syndrome has started to kick in, and I find that I’m starting to miss CMU. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be free from the stress and the homework, but I miss things like weird people and the freedom to be weird. I know I could get my dose of nostalgia and whatnot by coming to Carnival, but therein lays the problem.

Adulthood has captured the free time and finances of my friends and former classmates, and I find I have no one to go to Carnival with. I would be down to go alone, maybe, but I don’t want to come off as the desperate alum trying to relive her youth, and I don’t want to pay a good chunk of change and fly across the country only to be that creepy person at Carnival who roams around by herself.

So, should I just get up early and watch Buggy in my PJs, or should I come to Carnival?

Best,
Nostalgic for Imbibing Cool, Opulent Liquors in English Department

Dear NICOLE’D,

You sound familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?
In any case, I congratulate you. You’re the first person to write in this school year that writes in an intelligible manner! You deserve accolades, flowers, smatterings of applause.

But yeah, adulthood sucks. As a second-semester senior, I should be celebrating loudly and fervently, but instead I feel this creeping wave of exhaustion and apprehension of what’s to come — I have to take responsibility for my own life, my choices, my budget. Perish the thought!

It seems like you’re feeling pretty lonely, too, so there’s only really one remedy for that: Come to Carnival. Screw the cost, and screw the people you think will look at you a little funny for being the alum wandering through the third-year-in-a-row Pirates of the Caribbean booth behind the group of tittering freshmen girls — it’ll be worth it. You know it’ll be worth it.

People aren’t going to care, anyway — they’ll be too busy trying not to be seen buying their fifth basket of deep-fried Oreos in a day.

Buggy in PJs still sounds fun, though,
Evan Kahn