A blinking cursor is the most damning thing for a writer, his muse having left him for the aspiring novelist down the hall.

That black line and its rhythmic taunting at 3 a.m. drives anyone crazy, simultaneously highlighting the approaching deadline and the utter lack of any type of beginning whatsoever.

I sit here now, Thursday afternoon, fresh from the final class period of my senior year, trying to encapsulate my incredible undergraduate experience, my worldly advice (Ha!) and my fantastic hopes for the future. Oh yeah, and do it in about 600 words or so.

I know my uncle could have done it. He wrapped his mind around language and the law the way that Picasso carefully palmed a paintbrush, with a deftness and vision that escaped all but its possessor.

At my uncle's memorial service in December, one of his friends from high school remembered a high school physics assignment in which the students had to describe the process of a rubber ball falling off of a table and on to the floor.

As his friend struggled to think of anything, chomping furiously on his pencil, my uncle asked for another sheet of paper, his third.

I miss him terribly and wish he could come now, give me some guidance as to how to be irreverent, yet deeply meaningful, in the final piece I'll ever write for a place that was my life for the last four years.

But now the cursor won't stop blinking, the way it wouldn't at 4 a.m. in West Lafayette, Ind., as Rob Spruck and I stared bleary-eyed at laptops trying to write our third story following one of the football team's nine losses that season.

No, that damn cursor stayed on line one, mark one, the same way it would every midnight during the 2004 football season as delirium began to set in while my staff and I laughed about putting together another Collegian stadium magazine.

The same thing it's doing now.

What to say that hasn't already been said in senior columns, schmaltzy greeting cards and sappy speeches, or will be said in the coming weeks as family and friends congratulate you on your tremendous achievements.

Yep. There were plenty of memories, some made hazy by late nights and great friends, others heart-wrenchingly personal, and still more that I remember fondly as I'm fading off to sleep. Everyone has those memories, all of them unique and special.

Or there's advice that I'm hardly qualified to give. I'm 22 years old; what life lessons could I possibly have taught that a plethora of undergrads couldn't?

So the cursor continues to blink, flashing on a screen that remains like a clean slate. There's nothing written, the possibility of something great dancing around, just out of reach, in the recesses of my mind.

The questions come much more easily: What will I write tomorrow? What will I put down on my law school applications? What will my first job title say? How will my marriage announcement read? What will the announcement say about the birth of my first child?

So much remains to be included on that blank page. I know I'm excited to write it, anxious to see how it will be received, curious to decide what it will say.

It's just like that first sports page I budgeted this summer, when I learned that I was the sports editor. I can't help but smile as remember my fingers flying on the keyboard as I wrote down ideas, story assignments, story placement, art choices and how unbelievably proud I was of that first issue.

And how, no matter how proud I was, my mother was even moreso.

I know now that, whatever fills this space, should include some unabashed praise of the amazing people who have helped me get here, create my wonderful collage of experience, and enjoyed that amazing experience right by my side.

To my mother, my father, my brother, my stepmother, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my step sisters, my State College brethren, my football writers, my staff writers, my fellow editors, my classmates, my professors, my employers, my surrogate families.

To my friends.

I say thank you.

I'm just sorry I couldn't do anything but stare at the blinking cursor and wonder what might be written on that blank computer document.

And what will be written.