My journey through hell complete, I went about taking everything I had learned and began making this manifesto. Everyone thought making this book would be impossible, especially for someone like me that often has the attention span of a gnat, but I was different now. It was my senior year in college, the great home stretch, time to pull everything together and jump into the future. It was a golden age indeed.This included that wonderfully heady frenzy that proceeds any great trip into the unknown. For me it was the chaos of actually getting this book finished, printed, and following an ancient rite of passage; Getting the University to Let You Graduate. It is thought that one simply finishes their requirements and the school lets you graduate but this is a misconception created to lull people into a false sense of security. In order to actually graduate, you have to beat the school in a relentless game of mental chess and prove that you would be able to survive in the bureaucratic wilds.They tried no less than four times to knock me off the grad list, using missing credits, miss-allocated credits, a missing major, and at one point an ancient library fine, none of which they would warn you of. Each time I was sent on a wild round of paperwork that had to be accomplished by deadlines often in a matter of hours. Madness reigned and it was wonderful, like some sort of drug. I don't believe I have ever been so consistently drunk on anticipation. I had a wicked professor closing in for the kill but in the end, in the very end when I took that last spring into space, I knew she couldn't touch me anymore. No professor could touch me anymore.Yes my home life was deteriorating, with my mother finally snapping and packing everything I owned into boxes and putting in the garage, but who cared? I had a Book. I had a small pile of awards in my car. I was at the top. Now that I had graduated with honors and much recognition, I was going to complete the circle by moving into my own apartment and become a full-fledged Eccentric. There would be my own window, my own telly, my telescope, my greenhouse. I would fill the refrigerator with my own foods and have a lock on my door. With nothing left to lose and a brilliant future that was all but assured to me, I ran to the edge and leapt, leapt out with joyful abandon.Into the worst economy in seventy years.