On the monotonous drive out of Gainesville and back to Tampa, my head was swimming. Besides being thoroughly creeped out by the Lickity Splits billboard girl like I always am, my mind was filled with thoughts of another finished year of college. I’d say spring semester was a whirlwind of ups and downs, but if I’m being truthful, it was really only ups and more ups. It’s trite and cliché to say life is good, but, frankly, it is. I’m ridiculously excited for everything this summer holds for me: an internship with Health News Florida, a waitressing job at one of my favorite restaurants (glamourous, I know), a two week roadtrip to Chicago, the magical Bonnaroo music festival and countless other adventures. I plan on writing throughout the summer on various experiences and cool happenings (don’t worry, no flowery diary entries). The opportunity to create GainesvilleScene came out of nowhere, but has been and will continue to be, a really exciting endeavor. It became more successful than I ever thought possible and I just want to thank everyone who took the time to read our crazy words. Hopefully we made you laugh, made you think and gave you the real college perspective on how the world works.
Peace and love,
If you’ve ever seen the movie “Old School,” in the scene where Will Ferrell gets on stage during the Academic Olympic scene and says something semi-intelligent and immediately admits to blacking out for the entirety of his answer, you’ll understand when I say, what the hell has happened in the last year? I feel like I have experienced the world’s most intense blackout that runs not day to day, but minute to minute. Somehow I was blessed with the best friends, family and opportunities in the whole world and I am only 20 years old. Being able to write whatever I want and having people read it and actually enjoy it has been something that I hope everyone gets to experience and I thank all of you for that. Knowing that people want to listen to what you have to say almost makes me feel like Odysseus or someone else awesome, except I’m Matthew Arbucci, just some slum born in Jersey and raised in Sarasota, Florida…what? This summer, you will find me at 1 of 5 prominent locations in Gainesvegas: Balls, Dog, Cantina, Frat Daddy’s, and Swamp. If I’m not out wasting all the money I’ll be making working at Boca Fiesta (come visit), then I’ll be pretending to study business law while simultaneously slitting my wrists. Also, a big shout out to Gator Growl, I’m the creative director for our prestigious homecoming show and I’ll be out at Disney World for a weekend and doing a few other events around the sunshine state bonding with my fellow Growlers, SHOUTOUT GG TEAM.
I’m going to leave you with a piece of advice for this summer because I think advice rules: “Going into the unknown is how you expand on what is known.”
Go do something different, something weird.
Learn how to play the kazoo, who cares, just go do something you haven’t before and chances are, if you didn’t grow from it, it’ll be a fucking hilarious story anyway.
HAGS 
I walk alone through the bars of Gainesville I’ve come to call home for the past few years. I’ve lost the people I went out with and it dawns on me: I graduate in less than a week. Everything here will look different. I’m no longer a student. The identity myself and thousands of other have built over the past four years will be ripped out from under us as we become “adults.” While it’s scary, it envelops me with excitement. It’s akin to the feeling of jumping out of a plane, but the parachute is breakfast every morning with my parents and a job as a waiter. These past four years have been incredible and these past months as a writer for the Gainesville Scene have been some of the best. It’s been amazing being able to connect with the city that has been my home for so long now. Thank you all for reading and making this old man feel young again. Peace out everyone. One word of advice: when you graduate, don’t look at it as a scary cliff dive into the precipices of the real world, take it as an exciting adventure to the peaks of places you never knew could exist. You can go wherever you want, be whoever you want and have ice cream for breakfast. Majors don’t matter and where you go out on Tuesday becomes much less important. Enjoy your time here and explore this city. It has a lot of hidden treasures you’ll never discover if you spend all your time at midtown bars with the same four friends. Go for a walk, meet some new people, you might just encounter a part of yourself you never knew existed.
Sincerely,
As my junior year comes to an end, I can’t help but think to myself “why haven’t I been doing this the last three years?” We can literally say anything we want on here as long as people continue to read our articles, blow job banana nipples. Just kidding, but the feedback we’ve gotten from the student body so far in this experiment has been awesome; I’m so glad that our team of writers have been able to provide some unfiltered, straightforward shit for you guys to read. We enjoy doing this as much as it seems like we do. You guys keep on reading, we’ll keep on writing, and soon enough we’ll be making some Mitt Romney Money.
Just because school is out doesn’t mean we’re done. We have plenty of material coming your way to keep you guys smiling during your dreadful summer internships. I’ll be in New York working for the Burkman Bros so holla atcha boi.
Peace,
I love Gainesville, but I’m stoked to leave for the summer. I’m done with the frivolousness of school for the moment and ready to kick it with the 9-week-old puppy my parents just got two weeks ago (Her name is Rosie. She’s a mix of a German shepherd and black lab. She chills real hard). In between going on walks, playing fetch and getting my shoes chewed up, I’ll be memorizing 22 pages of information I’ll have to be able to recite on command for my internship at the Museum of Genocide Victims in the motherland (Vilnius, Lithuania). I’ll be a tour guide there from the middle of June to the end of July while intermittently working with the European Union (I’m getting real official). It won’t all be fun and games, though; I’ll be spending a couple weeks enjoying Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandies (highly recommended adult beverage) on the sands of Lake Michigan while visiting my kickass Baba, occasionally taking trains into the Windy City to make use of my membership to the Art Institute.
On a sentimental note, I can’t express how thankful I am for you readers. Getting involved with GainesvilleScene has been a hell of an experience and you all make it worth it. Expect big things from us in the future and look out for our other projects to take over the world.
Sincerely,
Image Courtesy of: Gainesville Connect
