Dear Seniors WATCH OUT! BUMPS IN THE ROAD

Seniors prepare yourself. After June you will be a twenty-something let loose into uncertainty. The first six months could be the most miserable time of your life; still against odds, your youth will be the envy of your older companions. You won't know why.

You will know navigating the working world is not strolling to class, sharing a dingy urban basement apartment with strangers is not lounging on the porch of your campus house, and spending half the week's grocery budget on dried pasta, a couple breasts of frozen chicken, and parmesean cheese is not piling your tray with french toast sticks, chicken O's, an omelet, a salad, and orange juice at Downer.

After an identity crises, pep talks with your parents, and a handful of interviews, you'll land a job. The job will be a drag - more like the Office than 30 Rock and you might be the Temp. Oh well, you'll get a Macbook with your graduation money. Your Macbook will be cool. Your friends will get a Macbook too. You will use Google video chat to catch up with Lawrentians from Vienna to Mumbai.

You'll make friends you don't have to video chat with. You'll have dinner parties and slurp wine with them, drag them to a Fleet Foxes show, and meet them at a dive bar to complain about work with them. In time, you won't have to preface every story with "He's the one I told you about that..." They'll do the same; you'll get to know the names and some of the faces of the people they work with.

You'll get a cookbook, something like How to Cook Everything; it is what you need, since you never quite figure out the method to the madness that dictates the hodgepodge of items that make it into your shopping basket. Your weekdays will fill up with impromptu dinners and drinks, and the book will gather dust. After the occasion where you chatted up the seafood counter and came away with scallops, you will dust off the book. The scallops will need more lemon. You'll remember that for next time, but for now you have to pack for your weekend trip to the Outer Banks.

One day you'll understand why people say "Oh, must be wonderful to be 23 again." Then the next class will graduate.

Cherry Blossom Run

On Sunday, I ran the Cherry Blossom Run with Maggie and Krys. We started and finished together. We finished without stopping.

Check out the heat of the race

Check out our champion pose