As my final semester begins to draw to an end, I find myself getting very reflective.
I've also started watching "Arrested Development," fitting the entire series in only a few days. It's a great show, but one thing I really noticed is how college and "Arrested Development" are similar, and I don't just mean that they were both funnier on Tuesday (wink, wink).
They both ended too soon, cut away from me by corporate America. They both had important life lessons to teach me, things like honesty, motivation and cat-like stealth. The show stresses the importance of family, which in college can really be anything. Your college family can be your friends, your study groups or the people you wake up next to.
The ongoing lesson that you can get out of your problems through unorthodox means rings true with every college student who has ever crammed the night before an exam, read SparkNotes or created Wikipedia articles to support your thesis.
One of the oddest things about the show is its treatment of casual incest. This really rings true in everyday America. It may not be our biological cousin we lust after, but a cousin of money or fame. Or, you know, our hot cousins. I'm just saying everyone has the same number of chromosomes in the dark.
The biggest lesson that "Arrested Development" has taught me is the importance of breaking the fourth wall. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and a life that is self-referenced is certainly well examined. Breaking that barrier that separates the show from the audience allows us a whole new perspective on our lives.
We can look back at some of our most outrageous moments and, tongues firmly in cheek, laugh at ourselves in order to learn from our mistakes, and we only do that to be able to go on to make newer and bigger mistakes.