Four years, two degrees, more than 100 articles, three semesters as a member of this paper's sports staff. Seriousness has marked most of this time, and I devoted so little time to frivolity and lightheartedness beyond freshman year. As a result, many of my stories reflected this. Google: "Healed but Haunted."

If my time here were like shopping in the supermarket, I'd have a cart full of Tombstone pizzas, Gushers and sour apple-flavored un-Jolly Ranchers. Cheerios? No thanks, give me William Penn's less popular brand of products, Quaker Mopes. I can't seem to break the streak. But for how badly I want to, there are still too many serious issues to address.

For instance, I saw Joe Paterno coming out of Wal-Mart around spring break. Most students had already vacated campus, leaving the average age of State College citizen closer to that of the esteemed football coach -- perhaps a reason why everything closed at 6 p.m.

Nevertheless, one has to be concerned over Paterno's need to shop at the superstore. Here is a man who clearly doesn't make enough money. I wonder how much he actually does. What's that? You don't know how much he makes either? No one does?

But of even more concern is that he had nothing in his hands, because if you can't find it at Wal-Mart, you can't find it anywhere. Perhaps he was looking for the two seconds of last year's Michigan game -- no one's got them in stock. Well, except maybe Foot Locker, right next to the yellow bandanas and whistles.

I'd love to laugh and smile, but weighty things like this just keep plaguing my mind. Even now that it appears like the academic workload is permanently lightening, post-graduation life takes its place. So many questions: what job will I have, how will I get it? I can't simply haul in my double-diploma frame to a publication and claim a position like settlers at Plymouth Rock. Maybe I can ask Rene Portland for some job help, she can't seem to lose hers. Does anyone have her number?

Then there's the issue of where I'll live. You can't be too selective with jobs, especially in journalism. If there's an opening, grab it. But if I do end up job searching for a while, I know I've got a confidant in the men's basketball program. They've been trying, but can't seem to get anyplace. Then I'll seek out advice from swimming coach Bill Dorenkott. He's an expert in getting more out of less than anyone else with or without an Olympic-size swimming pool.

But there I go again, focusing on the serious, the practical. What makes me so? Is it stories of trials like Scott Paxson, a card-carrying member of an athletics society with Oz-level mysteriousness? A society that makes his acts look more shady because the only way you ever see behind the curtain is when it trips and brings down the shroud on its own?

Is it that in sports, there are still stories of athletes with cancer, dead coaches, murders and crime? For how playful it's supposed to be, the cheerful balloon of sports is continually punctured by tragedy and failure. Maybe I've been enveloped by the idea that my purest childhood joys have been tainted. I think they call this jaded.

At the end of these four years, I call it disappointing. Not so much for the serious stories I've seen and reported, but that I've paid too close attention to them. This is not to say that there haven't been wonderful moments, like men's soccer player Jason Yeisley scoring the winning goal at national powerhouse Indiana on his birthday.

I don't know if I'll ever not regret writing some stories from a disappointing slant. I certainly didn't intend to hone in ... wait a minute. I did write that story on Yeisley! If that's not happy, what is? And all the stories I wrote with serious keystrokes, I wrote them in a newspaper office I would come to at night even when I had no story to write. I never said it, so let me say it now: the other writers, their individual laughs and wits and jokes, the inclusive feel addicted me to it.

And plus, at 22, I've got some years left to find more joys and unravel the jaded view. Somewhere there's joy in Mudville. JoePa could give me a ride to Wal-Mart so I can try to find it, but I have a feeling I'd walk out empty-handed. I'd be better suited to look at these three semesters on staff, at the staff, at the newspaper office for joy. The shelves there are stocked with it.