Once upon a time a short Asian man had just left public school to go to an early colleges program for their junior year and decided to just skip their senior year altogether and began applying for college.

This short Asian man scoured all across the country (but mostly the state of Washington) looking for colleges to apply to. From the East coast to the West coast, and even one in the Midwest they were determined to find the perfect place for them. CSU? Too close to home. Seattle University? Too expensive. Colby College? Too rejecting of their application. Finally, they had found it, the perfect school for them. Gonzaga University.

Unfortunately, capitalism had an evil scheme to foil this short Asian man’s plan of attending the school of their dreams. You see, capitalism had cast a spell on the admissions counselor to trick him into telling the short Asian man that the school couldn’t cover more than 25% of the tuition cost. The short Asian man was heartbroken and capitalism had thought it had one. Little did it know, there was another admissions counselor that came to the short Asian man, proclaiming “quit your weeping child, I have a proposition for you.” The short Asian man dried their tears and was led to a small unassuming campus. It’s city was simple, the food was bland, and the residential halls were down right dreadful. But the students were kind and if the short Asian man closed their eyes and listened to the hum of the summer cicadas they could almost trick themselves into thinking they were in a tropical forest. Best of all this admissions counselor had managed to escaped capitalism’s wicked spell and offered the short Asian man a full-tuition scholarship. The school this admissions counselor came from was Coe.

[coe visit photo]

So the short Asian man packed their bags in the fall and began the start of their adventure at Coe in the Boundary Waters of Ely, Iowa. It is here that they would meet life-long companions as well as numerous other companions that would drop out after the first semester of the journey.

Over the next four years the short Asian man began to grow and blossom as a student.

They joined a co-ed fraternity.

They began their barista career.

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They took playwriting.

They even managed to find time away for Coe.

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Then one fateful year, the senior year to be exact, they went on a spring break trip that would turn out to be the most eternal of all spring breaks and they never went to Coe as a student again.

One year later they returned to the hallowed campus of Coe College.

They looked down C Street, remembering the many times they took a drunken stumble down the cobbled road. They returned to the lost and found box in Hickok Hall where they used to get all their pens (for free!) before heading to a class. The pencil that was stuck to the ceiling of the choir room remained. But mostly importantly, they were able to break into the English Suite and leave a threatening message on the whiteboard next to the message they wrote the year before.

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Lesson: You don’t know closure is what you needed until you get it.