After five years in a four-year program, I’m finally graduating. I’ve put in a lot of work, made a lot of memories, and am now about to leave State College for the real world.

I have no idea what a “Senior Column” is supposed to be. I’ve read about ten so far, and they’re all vastly different. Even worse, they’re all incredibly personal, and stealing paragraphs would set off the alarms immediately. Instead, I decided to make something up, which is what you are now reading.

Somehow, even as a computer science major, I never realized that “Onward State” has the same initials as “Operating Systems” (OS, by the way). This grand realization came to me while procrastinating writing this article and leaning back in my desk chair to see a textbook on my shelf: “Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces”. The book takes three functions of operating systems and attempts to explain them simply for the reader (despite this, the tome is nearly a thousand pages).

The “pieces” from the title are: virtualization, concurrency, and persistence. Big words. I’m no expert — I’ve only made it through the introduction — but these three topics make for pretty good analogies if you try hard enough, which I have. Besides, it’s far too late to change my idea now.

Virtualization

First up is virtualization. Virtualization is the function of an operating system to divide and abstract its hardware resources, giving each process its own part. Each process — applications, programs, anything that runs — is given the illusion by the operating system that it’s the only thing running. Where a computer may have many processes running, all using a bunch of memory and disk space, each one basically thinks it’s all alone.

I think college years can be seen in a very similar way, especially somewhere like State College. This place is about as isolated from the real world as you can get — just drive a few miles in any direction —and college itself is the same way. After leaving home, we come up here for school, but it’s really an isolated place for us to learn how to be people. We grow up in a smaller bubble, then leave and are presented with the infinite possibilities of doing things on our own. We focus on school and social lives, all within a radius of a few miles.

This new bubble of college is about to be broken for me, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Living here has been wonderful — everything I need is within walking distance — and moving forward, the possibilities are on a staggering scale. It’s exciting and terrifying.

Concurrency

Concurrency is a function that allows for multiple processes to run simultaneously on a single machine. A CPU can only execute one instruction at a time, so the operating system needs a way to schedule each one in a way that everything running — for example, YouTube and homework — runs smoothly, without giving priority to one over another.

Life is full of competing processes. Finding a balance is difficult, especially with more than one. Multiple classes, social lives, sleep, and a little procrastination — all of these need to be balanced. Giving priority to one hurts the others. I’ve missed homework assignments because I had an exam in a different class. I’ve had to miss hanging out with my friends thanks to a big paper. And looking back, there was always time.

I can’t say I’ve mastered the technique myself. Over the years, I feel like I’ve kept up with most things, but there was always wasted time, or just a better way I could’ve done it. But that’s not what matters. I did get through it, and now, after all that, I’m moving on.

Persistence

Persistence. This one’s easy: the ability of a system to maintain data, even after the process that created it has ended. For example: save and quit. In life, we maintain persistence with our memories, and hopefully, a few photos for the scrapbook. 

When I look back, many of my fond memories here come from Onward State. Despite joining (finally) in my senior year, OS has been a part of me from the beginning. I met Nolan Wick, a former writer, within the first few months of school at a party held by someone neither of us knew. The next year, Jack Scott — another former writer — joined OS, and took me to one of their socials. I’m not sure if it was allowed, but he claimed social anxiety, and I just wanted to hang. Instantly, I loved the whole place, and met several people I’m happy to call my friends (including a reunion with the aforementioned Red Raider). I applied several times afterwards, either missing the deadline or being rejected, until finally joining in the fall of my senior year — and thank god. 

I never joined another club. I went to a few meetings here and there — including a Phroth one freshman year — but never stuck with it. Some were just lame, others scared me a bit, but for whatever reason, I kept applying to OS. 

I was never the most involved member of OS, but it affected me all the same. Despite trying to write for years, this is the first place I ever published anything. At the time, I hated most of the things I put out, but going back, I dropped some gold in there. I remember my first meeting, where Jack pushed me to take every article — I took one — and my first Snarkies, where I ran to the front thinking my award was called. 

I remember writing my bar crawl article with the help of my roommate, who proposed about fifty crawls in the form of “(random word) bar crawl,” to which I couldn’t stop laughing. I remember my magnum opus – “How To Pretend You Like Penn State Football” – and how my family sent it to everyone in their address book. 

Journalism was never something I intended to do, but this blog has been so important to me over these two years that I’ll never forget it. I keep my OS quarter zip on my best hanger, and I’ll wear that thing until it falls apart.

I hope the metaphors (analogies?) made some sort of sense. I know it did when I began writing this, but at the end, who knows? Either way, it’s time to say goodbye and move on.

There’s a lot I could have done differently these past five years, but even with a second (or third) run through, I don’t think anything would be different. I still would’ve made great friends, had a great time, and finished without everything figured out. I couldn’t be more happy this is the way things did go, though. In another life, I might have missed out on The Blog.