Soapbox

If I summed up the past nine months of my post-Augustana life in a few wise words to give 2011 graduating seniors it would be: watch traffic, not the lights.

Of course, this is meant from a pedestrian viewpoint, for drivers should definitely be mindful of both things, including, and above all, pedestrians. However, I shortly learned after moving to the Big Apple last June, this isn't always the case.

While crossing the street one summer evening, I encountered a driver who didn't care much for the glowing white light giving me the right of way.

Although the car, which swerved around the corner at a threatening 8 mph, was more obnoxious than truly dangerous, its persistence to inch the bumper as close to my body as possible without making actual contact was enough for me to lose my Midwest niceness.

In what I dub my first real "New Yorker moment", I stopped in the middle of the crosswalk, turned towards the car and threw up my hands in a "wtf" gesture.

I was so taken back by this instinctual response, which went against my Midwest roots of being passive aggressive when faced with conflict, that I quickly slumped away.

However, this experience taught me the valuable lesson: watch traffic, not the lights.

New Yorkers are naturals when it comes to this. They know that even if the light says go it's best to look both ways in case some maniac taxi is bounding down the avenue.

And also, they know a lot of time in the day would be wasted if they waited for the unpredictable lights to change before charging through the slew of unmoving traffic.

In New York, the streetlights are really more helpful suggestions rather than rigid guidelines. But this was a hard concept to grasp before finishing college.

Starting that first day of freshmen year, there always seemed to be this invisible neon sign hovering above students, counting down each minute. Schedules were structured around deadlines.

Dates in planners were marked off one-by-one, signaling a paper written or another test completed.

Each holiday break or new Stall Street hanging in the bathroom was just another reminder that the inevitable graduation day loomed in the not-so-distant future.

I was convinced that when the end of May hit my senior year, I was actually just going to implode.

But instead a funny thing happened - life went on. It was different, naturally. But it still continued.

When looking back at my four years at Augustana, it's not the classes I napped through (which were few and far between, of course) or the pointless fights with friends that I regret. I wish less time had been spent focusing on the end goal.

And I wonder how many opportunities were missed or how many unnecessary collisions could have avoided had I just been watching the traffic instead of always waiting for the lights to change.