I was sitting in Midway Airport in Chicago when I started writing this. It was nighttime, and I could hear the rain on the windows behind my chair at Gate B. It had been exactly one month since I had been in Buffalo, and after a trek halfway across the country through a handful of states, three jobs, and two days in the E.R., the only thing getting me to Buffalo was this rag.

The first draft of this was your typical bullshit editorial about establishing a staff here at Generation. This is, afterall, a student-run magazine, and with a few thousand new kids showing up every year, I’m suppose to make a good first impression and get some people on board here at the magazine, no?

And now I sit here, Friday evening, hours before your last chance to join the staff for credit, rewriting what I penned a few weeks back. Will you even see this before it’s too late to sign up? Not at all. Hell, you won’t see this until Tuesday.

Well, then. What the fuck are you doing here?

This fall marks the start of my fifth year at UB, and I know I’m not alone. A lot of us suck at this college thing, and even more of us are just lazy. It could be the insane amount of resentment in my blood or my own life experience desperately seeking an outlet, but as head Asshole-in-Charge of Generation, I really feel like I need to urge anyone picking this up for the first time, anyone coming to UB for the first time, and anyone that wants to give me shit, to go out and do something while you’re here. Fun is most certainly not going to find you on campus, so you better keep your eyes and ears open for your own good.

There have been countless botched relationships, deaths, tummy-aches, and personal breakdowns, all displayed perfectly by the countless Ds and Rs on my Dars Report. I didn’t even have a major until last semester. “Oh gosh, Andy, you must be quite a fuck up, huh?” Well, yeah, I don’t know about that much. Afterall, I’m writing something, and you’re reading it, so joke’s on you, Buster. Anyway, I’m kind of drunk, but I’m getting to a point here. Hold on.

After a month of partying my balls off in the Windy City (I found a job, made friends, got a bicycle, and ate exclusively hot dogs and pizza), the only thing that possessed me to return to this goddamn shithole was Generation. If I liked the rest of UB enough, I would have enjoyed the classes I took during the last four years and wouldn’t need to be writing this right now, but, obviously, that is not the case.

There isn’t exactly nothing to do here on campus, but let me tell you, there is a whole lot of crap. If you are new, you really need to think this over for a few days. Drink some Red Bulls, turn off the lights in your dorm, put Eraserhead on repeat and contemplate what you want to do here. Do you want to learn? Do you want to grow? Do you want to steal other students’ money? Do you want to go skiing? Get a job? Start figuring this out now, because in two months, you will be under four feet of snow, your water heater will be broken and you can bet your ass the Governors A lot will not be plowed. Whether it’s making meth in your dorm closet, or starting a band, find something now, because you are going to be craving some sort of distraction before you know it.

Growing up in Buffalo, I familiarized myself with Generation while still in middle school. Ten years have gone by, and here I am with four years under my belt, running this…thing. Am I going to make it good? Well, that’s the plan. But more than anything, I’m here for my sanity. Over the last four years I’ve had a blast. I traveled the country, made a ton of friends, was thrown down a flight of stairs in Niagara Falls, kicked out of a soccer game with Sean Paul and got quite a large number of people to hate everything about me. And that’s why I’m back here? You bet.

This is your school. You are going to hate it. I bet you already do. There is almost absolutely nothing you can do about it, but in the meantime, you might as well try to have fun. If you wanna meet some cool dudes, swing by the office here anytime and say “hi.” If you wanna write for us that is even better. In the meantime, I’ll make sure we have 8,000 of these things floating around every week to keep you from paying attention in World Civ. Just please, read the Personals last. They are in the back for a reason. And smoke a blut.