I’m over college. The pathway of trash that litters my apartment complex’s entrance on Saturday and Sunday mornings, an email from the kid who never shows up to class asking for notes, gently stepping on a wet stain on the sidewalk and hoping it wasn’t puke — I’ve had enough. I’m ready for a public transportation-filled, leather computer bag–carrying, Banana Republic-clad future. But why aren’t you?

In the ice cream sandwich of late and post-teenage years, the sticky vanilla goodness of college is smushed between two rough layers of high school and real life. And if there should be a natural progression from the uncomfortable socializations and fluorescent-lit hallways of high school to the potential jacket, suit and tie monotony of hard work in or near a big city, it doesn’t make sense that the four years students have to prepare for their next step is wasted, no pun intended. If college is supposed to be an educational center for professional training, then why is everyone so goddamn immature?

I’m not saddling up to ride an “I love to work!” high horse, but the lackadaisical disposition of the student body seems to revolve around a single principle: that working isn’t fun. I’m right there with you — as a day camp counselor, I would count down the six-hour days in 10-minute increments — but the reason I now hold down a handful of jobs is because if I love what I do, I’m never really working.

I know how stale economics, physics or history classes can be if you’re disinterested, and four years of that scholarly misery can be soul-crushing, especially if you’re majoring in it. It’s up to you to find a way around it.

Dying to be a screenplay writer but never have time to pen the ideas swirling around in your head? Propose an independent study idea, and get class credit for your work. Obsessed with football but think it’s “too late” to work toward a job as a sportswriter? Grab a camera, and start a blog documenting the oddities of tailgaters at every game you go to (I guarantee people will read it).

In the words of my favorite Project Runway fashion coach, “Make it work.” Find what you want to do, and go for it. If your only requirement for utopia is shotgunning a case of beer, you’re a lazy sack of shit, and I hate you. But if your dream job, like mine, involves face time with your favorite musicians and a slew of free concert tickets, focus on what you like doing in your spare time, and build a career around it, whether you have five weeks, 12 months or two years left at this University.