You know those ads that Fabio used to do? The ones where he would look all foreign and masculine and chiseled? And, he would explain, in an awestruck (read: heavily accented) tone how he simply was amazed at the facts he was presented with? And, he would state, loudly and definitively, in a way that you thought he probably understood most of the words he was saying:
I can't believe it's not butter!I remember that, too, and I think that now more than ever I can really sympathize with the astonishment Fabio was enduring way back then. I understand his inability to comprehend that the situation he was faced with was, indeed, real. I can't believe we're not freshman!

Sorry, we don't say "freshman" in these parts, we say "first-year." But I can't believe we're not first-years, either!
Ah, the old freshman/first-year distinction. That triggers more nostalgia than a Tony Danza clip show. I remember my first year I wrote a column explaining how I thought we should be labeled "freshmen" and not "first-years" because the connotation associated with "freshman" more accurately reflected our naivete. "During Orientation '98, the green-shirted volunteers were instructed to refer to my Class of '02 as first-year students at all times, and never to drop that dreaded f-bomb," I wrote. I described registering for my first semester from home, thinking: "'Hey, I can go to a 9-o'clock class! That means I could sleep in until EIGHT!' This is not the misguided thought-process of a first-year student. Only freshmen take 9-o'clock classes because they start so late."

It was cute, sort of -- kind of like the Olsen twins. But, some then-senior (Joanna Stromberg '99) wrote a letter to the editor, all in what psychologists call "a huff," saying this, "Perhaps the problem with 'freshman' that Friedman can't figure out is that it accurately describes only half of the entering class." She thought, of course, that I was an idiot for not recognizing that "freshman" as a label heaps massive insult and injury upon scores of "freshwomen." In my published reply, I apologized wholeheartedly to Stromberg and the Brandeis community at large, saying, "I would ask that, in the future, Stromberg and others refer to me using a nonsexist, ultra-PC version of my name: 'Lex Friedperson.'"

But, that trip down memory lane must come to a close, because I'm using up words in my last-ever Justice column; it's my last chance to fill this space and I can't spend all of it quoting from past columns. I considered titling this grand-finale column "The Lex Final" or "The Last File," and for a while I thought about titling it "Sex, Jehuda, and Carrie Fisher," just to try to boost my readership. But in the end, I've decided that it's nice and appropriate to keep my title "The Lex Files," even though the show whose name I parodied is now off the air. Just as "The X Files" will live on in syndication, so too do I hope that my "Lex Files" will live on after I'm gone, kindling the fireplaces, protecting the glassware, and lining the bird cages of tomorrow.

But now, after approximately 600 words of drivel (which would have been another decent title for my column these last four years), I have to make a sharp segue into the advice/mushiness/reflection part of this column before it's too late. Search your MP3 playlist for the latest emotional ballad from Celine Dion and join me at the next paragraph.

It seems like just eight semesters ago we seniors began our Brandeis careers. We went through Orientation together and we began forming a tight bond right there, huddled together in a protective mass as we feared for our lives with the hundreds of screaming "volunteers" all around us in Spingold. We stuck together through four years, as Ford Hall fell and Shapiro Center rose ... Or started to, anyway. We watched the SAT average of our accepted students go up while our US News & World Report ranking went down -- as did Monica Lewinsky and Al Gore, although in different ways. We saw WBRS go from being a purveyor of crappy music to, in the end ... a purveyor of crappy music. While the real world got ever-more frightening -- both in terms of sadder and sadder news and in terms of the fact that we were getting closer and closer to the realities of post-college life -- Brandeis remained largely unchanged. The bureaucracy and politics were there, but so were the good times.

As a whole, our class represented a shift from the once-omnipresent Brandeis student stance that there was nothing fun to do here. I believe that the Class of 2002 recognized that if we wanted our time here to be fun, we had to make it fun, and we did just that. And, of course, we went to classes sometimes and did pretty well there, too. But now, we bid farewell to Brandeis ... and bid hello (if there is such a thing) to the next stage of our lives, the stage I like to call, "After Brandeis." (Although its official name is "Harold").

Whether your next stop is grad school or employment or a year off, this is an amazingly important time of our lives. Never before have we stood so close to the edge of the real world, tiptoeing out of our youths as we prepare to test the waters of our future . and gingerly step out of our extended metaphors.

And, don't worry about it! Seriously, I think we're ready! Me, I'm geared up to face rejection after rejection, but some day my parents will love me. No, I mean, I think we all realize that not everything in life will be easy, but we're also young enough and eager enough that we won't get bogged down in our failures. If we learn from our mistakes, then I'm ready to become a genius. As any of you who know me realize, I make mistakes as often as sitcom stars make babies. But, if we're able to let our missteps in life shape our futures ... If we're able to brush off the stains from the lemons life may deal us and make Lemon-Flavored PowerAde ... Well, then I think we'll do just fine.

I can't promise we'll all be successful. (Note: By "we," I mean, "you.") But, I am confident that our Brandeis experience has helped us master the art of taking what comes and not letting it bring us down. I wish all of us the best of luck -- though I don't think we'll need it.

Because even if we're ready to deal with rejection, I think we succeeded at Brandeis. As a whole, we have accomplished what we set out to do here. And, in this case, by "we," I mean "me." And, by "what we set out to do here," I mean, "finally finished my last damn Justice column."

-- Lex Friedman '02 submits a column to the Justice