Emma Philbrook: STUDENT LIFE

As the end of my high-school career draws closer, people are asking me more and more frequently whether this column will continue once I leave for college.

Unfortunately, the demanding coursework awaiting me as a freshman at Whitman will consume most of my free time, and so it will most likely be well-nigh impossible for this piece to continue in its current format.

However, I have several ideas for utilizing this space in an entertaining manner well into the future, and I wanted to run them past you.

**One option, for those of you primarily concerned with keeping up with the events of the Philbrook household, is having a member of my immediate family begin writing a column in my stead. Of course, Mom hasn’t written creatively for fifteen years, and Chris usually does his homework on Sunday night when I type this thing. But I’m sure that, given an effective translator, either of the cats would do an admirable job.

**If it’s my writing that you’re into, for one reason or another, I can publish the corny mystery novella I wrote in the ninth grade as a serial. That should get us through my freshman year, at least, provided anybody can be bothered to care about the characters post-Chapter 1.

**If you’re more interested in my current writing, I can always send in my term papers to be published as serials. (C’mon, you know you’ve always been interested in ethnomusicology!)

**What? Not actually that interested in ethnomusicology, corny mystery novellas, or my cats? In that case, I’ve got one word for you – reruns. (Or perhaps reprints would be more accurate.) Of course, the events they discuss will be only distant memories at the time of publication, and you’ll be forced to deal with my amateurish tenth-grade banter on a regular basis. But other than that they’ll be just like new!

**Don’t like leftovers? In that case, The Times can always publish the Lost Columns. These were my inaugural attempts at writing a humor column. They’re actually pretty good columns, but my first editor favored a more matter-of-fact writing style, so none of them ever made print. They’re fresh, they’re funny, and they’re surprisingly similar to the bunk I crank out these days. The only problem is that there are only two of them.

**On the other hand, going back to the serial concept, I could send in my valedictorian’s address for publication. That would last you all the way through November. (Can I help it if I’m loquacious?)

**Perhaps the ideal solution would be for me to send a little “update” piece in every month or so. I could probably manage one column every four weeks, and I would have all kinds of exciting things to talk about – my first all-nighter, my epic failures in art class, and maybe even a date or two.

**Does that sound good? If not, maybe we could just put a Sudoku puzzle here. Heck, there might even be room for two.