Editor's Note (2/23/10)

Story by John Rincon 

| Published Feb 23, 2010

Hello party people,

Everyone having a good time?

Great.

I’m a little bit of a partier myself.

Partying is one of the few things that keeps me grounded. Partying keeps me from going insane from dealing with school, DailyER and life in general.

My weekend, sometimes weekday, excursions are my catharsis.

They are my emotional release from the stress from the monotonous and tedious nature of our collegiate curriculum.

I know this feeling of release is necessary for all people.

Letting loose is very important for maintaining mental health but don’t get carried away or else the well-being of the other facets of your life will begin to deteriorate.

I’m all for the occasional release from reality but when that release becomes your reality, it becomes a problem.

It becomes an addiction, and once it becomes an addiction, things start falling apart.

I am a National Hispanic Scholar. This means that I have to maintain a GPA of at least a 3.5.

This held true for the rest of my fellow Hispanic scholars.

Unfortunately, I watched many of my friends’ grades decline as they sank into the false comfort of drugs and alcohol.

Holding onto their temporary euphoria they lost hold of their more important responsibilities.
I don’t see those friends anymore.

They’re still alive don’t worry, but they had to return home or transfer on account they lost their scholarship, consequently their ability to afford school.

I hope this doesn’t happen to any of you, whether you have scholarship or not.

Should you use that free Saturday to its fullest advantage and lose your mind a little?

Be my guest.

But don’t lose sight of what is more important.

I promise you, no one dislikes and wants to disregard school more than I do, but the gut-wrenching reality is that I know that school is my best bet on getting a foot up on the competition that is the rest of the world.

I don’t mean to preach and I don’t mean to talk down to anyone, I just want everyone to take their best bet.

We all have our times when all we want to do is sink into a bottle of booze, go up in a puff of smoke, or just fade away into oblivion without responsibility or expectation.

We can’t give in.

Life sucks a lot of the time, and life isn’t fair because life doesn’t care, but life can blow it out its ass.

Good lord this sounds corny, but it’s how I feel.

Those who can adapt and evolve through their individual dilemmas succeed.

Get through the hard times so you can get the release you deserve.

If there’s no obvious way out of a bind, put your head down, start screaming really loud and ram through.

Don’t give in to the allure of drug induced deliriums or just plain procrastination.

I hope you liked my little spiel, if not, that’s cool too.

Either way, I’m looking forward to us partying together some day.

Salud,


John Rincon
Editor-in-Chief
DailyER Nebraskan