Life may very well be like a box of chocolates, but college life is more of a pinball machine.

As Pomp and Circumstance drums in the back of my mind, I can’t help but reflect on the last four years I’ve trod the grounds of N.C. State. Perhaps it’s nostalgia or some awakened fear of future uncertainty that has overcome me.

I don’t know.

There’s a convincing hope within me that says I’ve changed — for better and for worse. I can tell myself with certainty that I’m less certain. In fact, my faith is tattered, my hairline is inching backward, and I’ve grown somewhat jaded to the meaningless worldly habits we adopt.

But then there are the unchangeable behaviors that give me peace through constancy. I still bite my nails, I still hold strands of impenetrable idealism, and I always crack open a can of Mountain Dew on my way to class.

You see, many of us come here as freshmen with an unlimited supply of truth and a limitless supply of adventure. I lost the first and perfected the latter.

If you ask anyone in the higher education realm to explain the purpose and direction of a university education, they can show you organizational charts and drone on about the changes a person undergoes from age 18 to 20-something. They’ll tell you what struggles you face sophomore year and what life lessons you should have learned junior year.

But they secretly know you can’t package the experience of college or construct a diagram explaining the changes we undergo.

No. College is a pinball machine. You get sprung into the system and bounce off from place to place with a couple of falls in the gutter. There’s no formula and no map. It’s just bounce, bounce, bounce.

This complex and chaotic path is different for every single person. There are no two equal outcomes generated from the collegiate experience.

Of course, the less enlightened among us just wander from one destination to the next with short-term goals. They never look back and don’t think to look forward. And if they believe they’re living, they’re wrong. There’s a difference between living and merely existing — being lost and knowing you’re lost.

So, I began to ask myself what I learned from these four years. What new philosophies did I adopt? What different perspectives did I see? How did these experiences shape who I am or where I’m going?

And I reached some clouded conclusions.

For one, most university learning happens outside of the classroom. If you came to NCSU and spent four years solving differential equations and writing essays, you missed out on a university education.

Formal learning is overrated — and this comes from a future teacher.

Real learning involves answering the larger-than-life questions that consume us and pushing ourselves into unfamiliar territory. I contribute most of my newfound knowledge to the janitors who work in Witherspoon Student Center, friends who took me to the bar, international acquaintances who showed me new ways to look at the world, and realist Washington politicos who taught me to view humanity in its rawest forms.

Secondly, I’ve decided that life is too brief to feel suppressed or to live off of miserable mediocrity. As my grandmother was dying of liver cancer this past fall, she told me that she would have done things so much differently. She would have been more of a risk taker, more daring and more adventurous.

Too many of us are content with playing life safely. We pick the careers that others tell us are respectable. We get into pointless relationships because that’s rewarded. And we try to make ourselves happy by buying new cars, pleasing others and speaking with the most fine-tuned political correctness.

That’s bull. I’m doing what I want, when I want.

I’m sorry if I was overly philosophical, on edge or egocentric in my reflections. But I hope you’ll put the pieces together for yourself.

I love NCSU for its friendliness, its simplicity and its diversity. But people around here have become so content and so technical that it bores me to tears.

And so, the game of college is over for some of us. For the rest of you — good luck bouncing around inside this pinball machine.

E-mail Forrest at [email protected].