Dear Oakland University,

We need to talk. I … I’m breaking up with you. It’s over. I’m sorry but I have to end it between us.

Our time together over these last two and a half years will be years that I’ll never forget. But I cannot continue being with you. This has to stop — I literally cannot take any more classes here that count toward my degree, so come May 1, we’re through.

Let’s face it, you need your space. Mainly parking spaces. And a new medical building? I’m supportive of all your endeavors and everything, but now you’re going to be a top ranked medical school? Whatever happened to that fall-back school I fell in love with?

Forget I said that, that was harsh. You were always my first choice. After that time I spent with Macomb Community College, you were like a shimmering angel of gold and black compared to — well hell, I don’t even know if that school was good enough to have colors.

I digress. This isn’t about her. This is about you and I and how this just wasn’t meant to last. I knew going into this that this was just going to be a semi-serious thing. A few days a week, a couple dozen thousand dollars of my parents money, a nifty little degree, that was all I was really going for.

Say, do you remember that time my friends and I ran through the Oakland Center screaming our heads off after the men’s basketball team made it into the NCAA tournament? Do you remember that kitten I found wandering around Beer Lake? You remember when I would sneak up to the top floor of the Science and Engineering Building with my friends, before they locked students out? We’ll always have SEB.

Any time I spend 15 minutes stalking someone in a parking lot to get their spot, I’ll think of you. Any time I get super frustrated with ill-designed computer programs that inevitably cause a brain hemorrhage, I’ll think of SAIL. And the next time I spend exponentially way too much money on a book I’ll never use and only be offered spare change when I go to return it … baby, I’ll be thinking of you.

Graduating is a part of life. I’ll eventually take my journalism degree and wind up still working for my dad’s landscape company. You’ll still be in Rochester, where I’m sure you’ll meet tons of new people. Like, thousands of new people every semester. I don’t expect you to not meet anyone new after we’re done.

I’m 22, you’re 53. People normally look at a relationship like that as weird, but we made it work. Don’t think of this as one of us failing the other, unless you count that one online philosophy course in which I really was almost failed. Oh, and “You Can Afford This.” I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive you for that one.

Although, I will miss hanging out with my buddies in the honors college of 5 West Vandenberg, those crazy kids over at WXOU, those girls who wear shorts and tank tops the first sign of it getting warm on campus, the Subway employees who yell at everybody, and the entirety of the men’s basketball team. I will forever have the names Benson, Jones, Hudson, Cushingberry, Maynard, Nelson, and especially Kampe etched into my brain. I still have a wallet full of Mongolian BBQ coupons I got from the home games that I need to use.

Nothing, however, will be more well remembered than my time working for The Oakland Post. In my time as Mouthing Off editor I’ve written about boobies and zombies, caffeine and sarcasm, the Olympics and the Nobel prize, the history-making teachers strike and the history of my generation. I’ve cut my hair for this paper, I’ve witnessed little people strippers for this paper, I got Ryan Hegedus naked for this paper. Yes, Holly Gilbert, advisor to The Oakland Post, I am going to get cliché and devote an entire paragraph to The Post. It’s my last column so deal with it.

There were times when I thought braving the trek down M-59 wasn’t worth being with you, and there were times before this when I thought about breaking up with you and running off to live somewhere that didn’t resemble an arctic wasteland in January. But I stuck with you, and now have a collection of awesome free shirts because of it.

Can we just be friends? I’m not sure. I don’t know if I can be that guy who hangs around after he graduates, eating free food and sleeping somewhere in the Oakland Center. I need to move on, become my own person without you. I need to evolve.

Unless you can offer a free semester of beer-tasting classes, a graduate program in playing video games at my leisure, or bring me back as a guest lecturer when I become rich and famous and/or controversial and infamous, I have to end it between us now.

Never forget me, OK? Always remember the good times and not the bad. Remember the smile on my face when I walked through your hallowed halls, thinking to myself, “This is so much cooler than going to Central.” Remember the times late at night when I would do circles in the University Drive roundabout just because. Remember to shout and scream wildly when they announce my name on May 1 at the graduation ceremony.

This is it, Oakland. We’re done. I love you and I always have. I will always be your Golden Grizzly, and you will always be my alma mater. Stay classy, Oakland. Love,

By DAN SIMONS

Mouthing Off editor / soon to be bitter ex.