Finding the exit sign

Saying goodbye is cliché. \nYet when it comes time for a human to end any familiar cycle of events, there must be an outpouring of remembrance, melancholy and well-wishes for the people that they shared their cycles with. Goodbyes happen to someone every minute. However, one will always think their own set of goodbyes was the most emotional or the most meaningful that ever was. Because it was their own, it happened to them, and no one will ever be able to take that memory away.\nIn the end, people actually possess little to nothing, except for their experiences and their memories.\nThose of you graduating, that is what your four (or more) college years will be condensed to -- a fleeting daydream of the knowledge gained, the social life lived and the debauchery participated in at dear old Indiana U.\nI'm saying goodbye as well. Good spirits and wishes to you who are heading into the real world. It's a bear. Get a job you like because otherwise you'll hate yourself in the morning. And every subsequent morning after that.\nI'm saying farewell to the graduates from the Indiana Daily Student -- a lot of them have been the reactor fuel for this place to run, and it won't be the same without them. We learned from each other. They taught me news and newspaper business, and hopefully they learned from me to explore more than one viewpoint ... that there's always another way to do things.\nI'm saying au revoir to the French. They would have preferred it that way.\nI'm saying hasta luego to all things porno. Ever since Mitch and I dug up that story, IU has been in a tizzy. Administrators were buying porn, students were inspired to give freely of their sexual favors, and Bill O'Reilly got one-upped by a woman named Calli Cox. In America, a former middle school English teacher's dreams can really come true. Detention is fun again … I also heard rumors that a complimentary copy of "Campus Invasion 32" will be a part of the freshman welcome week package. \nI'm wishing a not-so-good-bye to war protesters of both sides:\n1. If you oppose the war, tell someone who can do something about it and write a congressman. Protesting in front of the county courthouse just makes you look silly and accomplishes nothing.\n2. If you're for the war, respect those who aren't. Just because they disagree doesn't mean they are less than human.\n3. If you claim to be "pro-troops," you're full of it. Who isn't pro-troops? No one but the funeral home owner likes to see people die.\nI'm saying goodbye to Jill Behrman. She was, and is, so much more than people realize. As a college student, she was an upstanding citizen. As a missing person, she united a community. If you missed the IDS on the Friday before spring break, you missed perhaps one of our best papers ever.\nThanks to Eric, Marilyn and Brian.\nI'm saying goodbye to Dan Carino, the now infamous cartoonist implicated in the Feb. 5 anti-affirmative action scandal. Thanks to him, my life was made 10 times more interesting. I thank him for his contribution to the greater good of society.\nHe was the sixth step on my 12-step path to better sarcasm, guaranteed.\nI'm saying goodbye to the IU students busted in the international ecstasy smuggling ring broken up two months ago. Hadn't they seen those anti-drug commercials? Ecstasy trafficking supports terrorism.\nI said at the beginning that goodbye is cliché.\nInstead, I will say good day. I wish you all one, and one more after that.\nBecause goodbye means you might not come back. Good day means I can return. And I will.