A deadline approaches. For some of us, it seems so far away we can’t even picture its arrival; others of us hurtle toward it at the speed of light.

We’re running out of time to drink, cuss and smoke chronic like tomorrow will never come. We’re running out of days when we can wake up in unfamiliar shrubbery wearing someone else’s pants and a hat made of Dr. Scholl’s insoles. We’re running out of dilapidated apartments to bedeck with stolen road signs and pictures of friends engaging in the famed four-way make-out.

Graduation for me is a hazy time between May and July, depending on when I can finally knock out the last of my 120 hours. Up until recently, I dreaded this moment marking the point of no return; that final step into crappy ass adulthood.

But this isn’t a call to all students, saying hurry up and have fun while you still can.

It’s one saying: don’t ever stop partying unless it threatens lives.

We too often think of college as our last blast, the final four to seven years of partying before we hand our lives to the proverbial man. But my life won’t plateau once my degree is in hand. I won’t stop learning, I won’t stop looking forward to things and I sure as hell won’t stop partying.

Your life as a responsible adult begins when you want it to. Ain’t nobody trying to make you squeeze out babies before you’re ready- You’d be doing the poor kids a disservice if you did.

I work hard, so I party hard. That’s my motto. I still manage to hold a job, pay bills roughly on time and keep my internal organs in good working order. It can be done. And it’ll keep getting it done after I’ve crossed the mighty threshold from student to alumna. What about graduation should keep the beer bong out of my mouth, glitter off my sternum and my dancing feet off the bar?

We tend to think of our lives as a great buildup to this zenith of college life that grinds down to a slow cycle of work-store-work-home once we’ve passed this peak. But adulthood has its moments of greatness, too. We’ll still have friends, and we can still relish every morning we spend with them nursing a hangover with Quarter Pounders. We’ll still learn things about ourselves, how people tick and how the universe unfolds around us.

Classes aren’t what create the lifestyle we dread leaving behind. They are, of course, a college experience, but I know I’m not the only student here who basically sucks at school. It’s time for me to stop taking classes and stop infuriating professors with my lackadaisical approach to studying and attendance. It’s what’s best for all of us.

But I can still soak in the glorious suds of collegeness for a while without being creepy. The bar is still full of people years older than me and I plan to keep haunting this town until I’m so elated my smile cracks the bones in my face.

And anyway, most people secretly love that old ho who leers over a Harvey Wallbanger at young men and women gyrating in a pit of dish foam, right? I want to be that woman, and have the cats, silver streaks and endless sass to back it up.

Quit writing the obituary for your partying persona – let her live on.