We'll all bounce onâ_"okay?

I'm not really sure how I got here. I've been having that thought for a while. It started as a classic utterance between a friend and me whenever our surroundings seemed too weird to comprehend. First, we'd identify a situation as decidedly weird or a person as creepily and unequivocally quirky. We'd then find each other's eyes, pausing for dramatic effect and sending our eyebrows skyward. Finally, one of us would just say it, whisper it, mouth it. "How did we get here?" There have been so many instances where we've applied this rhetorical question. Sitting in a cloud of blue smoke on the roof of Aycock, for example, with two strangers. Watching a gaggle of girls, dressed as the cast of "Miami Vice," walk down our dorm hall on a weeknight. Staring at a kid doing the "Thriller" dance in its entirety, then watching his roommate photograph women's high-heeled feet. Walking around at every single tailgate. It seems that at a substance-saturated college for smart kids, weirdness isn't altogether uncommon. But the question isn't purely a silly punchline for an awkward situation. Take my circumstances right now. I'm sitting here at my desk in a little office in the Flowers building, 25 pages left to write for a final paper, no time to even think about the gym and too food-point-poor to buy either dinner or caffeine (my two finals-period food groups). Instead, I'm writing a column. Somehow, some way, I have deemed this both logical and normal-even, as my parents cringe, at the cost of shirking my "real" work. Apparently I'm a different animal than the voracious amasser of A's and athletic awards I was in high school. How did I get here? I know I'm not the only one who asks myself this question. Think about it. What crosses your mind when you awaken at Bostock after a two-hour nap? Or when you're standing with a dozen teammates in front of the cameras, celebrating a great victory and an ACC title? When you're president of your fraternity though you never thought you'd go greek? Or when you wake up one Saturday in somebody else's bed, realizing you're wearing a rumpled Party Monitor shirt and XXXL Umbros? I guarantee your first thought isn't, "Hmm, I haven't worn Umbros since I was playing sweeper in the nine-and-under league." Really, how the hell did we get here? Can't say that I know. I know that even while I blink two or three times to make sure I'm not hallucinating, I wind up seeing the same things in my present and future. Writing, maybe, is my most obvious pursuit, and I can't see a time when that won't be true for me. It's getting deep in here. But occasionally, my plan to be ever eloquent and profound has backfired. Like that time I forgot the "so irrefutably hot and p" in the "so irrefutably hot and pimpish" modifier I once attached to a selective house. Sigh. One innocent slip on the keyboard and suddenly, you're an a-hole. At least my bench rights weren't revoked. My point is this. Despite being a fairly opinionated person, I don't think I'm here because I've got a clipboarded agenda of things to say. I think I'm here because I don't. I like to say what you're thinking, to write what you can't stop talking about or what I can't get out of my head. It's fun for me to have an experience or to listen to friends' conversations, then subsequently convert it into an aimless 750-word diatribe with little coherence or style. (Cue you: "NO, but, we love your column! We'll miss it so much! It's a crap-shoot on the coherence thing, but we laugh when you make fun of yourself!") Ahem. My column isn't the extent of my prodding or pot-stirring, to be sure, but it's the most visible form of it. For a while, I'm done. And though I'll be heaping plenty of responsibility on my plate to fill the void it leaves, I'm hoping I'll still have time for meditative pondering. What's really important, I think, is not how I got here. It matters more why I'm here, at this school and on this planet-and what in God's name I'm going to do about it. But for now, kiddos, this ball is over the fence, out of the park and hurdling through the frost-fraught air. When I get somewhere good, I'll let you know. Sarah Ball is a Trinity sophomore and the new editorial page editor for The Chronicle. This is her final column.