This funny guy has to get serious about education, future

I am sad to report this will be my last column for The Metropolitan. Please, stop crying.

However, I am not leaving you so I can go drinking or carousing with loose women (I think my girlfriend would kill me for the latter). I am leaving to pursue my student teaching in the spring. I will miss spending my Thursday afternoon writing these gems for you, the reading community, and I hope I was able to give you something in return.

Since I began this column in August, I have had a lot of people read and comment to me about the tone of these pieces. "They're very upbeat and happy," one woman told me during a break in one of my classes. I have been told in several other ways that my columns give a stark contrast to the very serious tones of my colleagues' pieces in the Insight section. There is a reason for this: comic relief.

For those of you not familiar with this literary term, the comic relief is a character whose sole purpose is to give a bit of levity to an otherwise serious situation or plot theme. Nathan Lane or Jason Lee usually play this person in any movie. However, the comic relief is not there for simple levity; it gives people a chance to catch their breath and maybe look at the world through the eyes of someone who is removed or simply optimistic.

This world does hold a lot of horrors, we all know that. My colleagues at this paper have given you, the dutiful reader, a lot to think about. They have taken you to the depths of human depravity and uplifted you with touching stories of the perseverance of the human spirit. My job was to come in and make you laugh or simply smile. Sure, my pieces can be called fluff, but sometimes that is what we all need. If this weren't true, Dave Barry would have spent his life working at a Dairy Queen instead of writing about boogers and bowel movements. He makes us smile. I hope I have made you smile, too.

I should also mention this wasn't my first job as a columnist. I went to the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley for four years and one of them I was a columnist at The Mirror, UNC's student newspaper. My columns tended to be on the more serious side with an obnoxious one now and then. I used my columns more for post-adolescent venting than anything. I got a rise out of some people and others simply didn't care. I look back on those days and wonder why.

The time I have spent at The Metropolitan has given me pause on this thought, even though I am not going to become a journalist in the future, I thought this job could be something I could do to help my friends at The Met' and have a good time as well. I have had a good time this semester and I hope you did as well. I wish everyone who reads this the best of luck and the fullness of hope.