I'm a senior, I'm about to graduate and I'm scared.

I'm ending this semester with an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach because for the first time in 16 years, I don't know what I'll actually be doing at the end of summer. Actually, I don't know what I'll be doing this weekend. But I'm talking about the complete unknown, the big void: reality.

Remember the feeling you got walking home on the last day of school? The sun was warm (even in Canada), and you couldn't wait to rush in the back door and throw your book bag into some dark corner, never to be seen again until next September.

Cherish that feeling. Like the sensation of a baby tooth wiggling loose, it won't ever come around again.

The truth should be told -- I'm not quite done with classes, even though this is my fourth year. But I'm going to commencement because my sisters wanted to see Disneyland©®, and my parents thought if they waited until next year, Los Angeles would probably have burnt down, fallen over and sunk into the sea.

I'll have to take some summer courses to officially receive my degree, otherwise known as The $100,000 Receipt.

But no matter how expensive a frame I put it in, it's not going to answer some nagging doubts I have about my whole college career. The proper name for this is the "Big Fish in a Small Pond" syndrome.

In high school, I was a big fish. Perhaps not the biggest, but certainly a mackerel of no small consequence. I'm sure that most of the people at USC were big fish at some point, metaphorically speaking and apologies to Faulkner.

But my university career has been a marvel of blandness. I feel confident that I spent my time doing something, but all I have to show for it is four years-worth of Daily Trojans and a file cabinet drawer full of class notes.

A quick glance at my résumé (and what graduate doesn't have one of those lying around now?) shows that I didn't get a single new scholarship or award. I wasn't head cheese of a single campus organization.

Athletic achievement? Getting out of bed every mo(u)rning. Artistic achievement? Playing with my food in Commons. Intellectual achievement? Well, my team came in third at College Bowl . . .

I can say "Sour Grapes! I must have just spent my energy elsewhere," but I wouldn't really mean it.

You see, I want to accomplish something in my life, something profound and influential, something I'll look back on and say, "Hey, I changed things for the better, there's the proof." I want my own Eiffel Tower, something tangible that will stay standing long after I'm gone. The problem is, I don't know exactly how to go about doing that. There's no course offered in school called "How to Make Your Mark."

I don't argue with those who say school is an endless series of hoops (except I discovered it's not endless), and what gets recognition in here isn't what gets noticed out there.

But is the real world another set of hoops called Job, Taxes, Promotion, Family, Mortgage and Retirement?

I guess I'm about to find out.

Thanks, George, Susie, Debbie and KT for the support you've given me. I couldn't have made it without you. Or maybe I could, but it would have been very boring.

Thanks to the DT folks for sucking every drop of energy and all my free time for the past four years.

Thanks to my friends and family back in Calgary (or at least that's where we all were when we started). May the moose be with you, eh.