“I said it was going to just be two years, in and out,” said Troy Gutierrez, a community college transfer student who chose to complete his bachelor’s degree in the bleak setting of a gloomy, ill-maintained decrepit Midwestern town. “Tuition at a Harvard or a Yale is just unfeasible in my situation. The town might be ugly, it might seem devoid of life. I suppose it’s a bit off-putting that they still haven’t figured out who’s responsible for that dead body that’s lying face down on Elm street, or that they haven’t found it necessary to  move it. The stench, I admit, is getting unbearable on my walks to campus. But what can I say? You can’t beat the price.”

Gutierrez, a criminal justice major determined to become a detective, explained his own strange, perhaps uncharacteristic sentimentality as he approaches graduation next week. “I’ve never been much of a sentimental guy. But hell, I think I’m actually going to miss this place.”

Gutierrez confirmed that he is currently living out every college graduation cliche known to man. “I loathed this place when I first moved here,” Gutierrez explained. “Really, I loathed it. It’s an ugly place. I mean, really UGLY. But it’s starting to grow on me–call it graduation goggles, whatever. That crumbling building off of East quad is starting to look pretty quaint to me.  I never realized it until a few days ago, after I finished my last final.”

The young soon-to-be college graduate at first considered leaving before graduation, claiming: “I just don’t think I could bring myself to go. I well up just thinking of all my friends with me, gathered in our caps and gowns, getting ready to never see each other again. Never mind that Debby turned me in for cheating on my final in econ, that b*tch. I’m really going to miss her!”

Gutierrez confirmed that he has decided to stay in town after graduation, maybe try to convince a professor to let him sleep on his couch. The prematurely-reminiscent college senior hasn’t ruled out living out a Noah Baumbauch Kicking and Screaming type situation; that is, if his friends will all ditch their graduate school plans to maintain residence in the town they all swore they “could no longer stomach” just a few months ago.