I first saw L'Auberge espagnole this summer when I was living in Uncle John's Band, possibly the only Dead House whose starring living room attraction is a 36-inch television. Xavier is a straight-laced young French guy studying in Barcelona via the European exchange program Erasmus. He ends up moving into a crowded apartment of international students from England, Italy, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and Belgium and learns not only Spanish and economics, but about finding himself.

A trite plot, of course, but it's done with charm, wit, and great visual effects and doesn't succumb to any easy ways out at the end. You should see it on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I think what draws me in despite the bohemian clichés is that I am the cliché. It's so much like the summer after freshman year when I moved, alone, into Dire Wolf, and then that fall into Synergy. Spontaneity, independence, and genuine caring despite the many eccentricities dispersed amongst the crew.

An IMDB review says: "Some of the reviewers here are looking for a message, and I think it is simply that this period of chaos and change should be cherished. Also that it has to be undertaken once and largely alone."

I've had quite a few adventures in the past few years. I've biked and camped my way from Seattle, up Mount Saint Helens, and down to campus. I've worked in the epitome of dot-com dot-commery. But have any of them really been undertaken alone?

That's not a rhetorical question—that is, I'm not so sure the answer is no. I struck out by myself a lot when I was eighteen. First I built bridges in the backwoods of Washington State for a month. Then I left for here, the only one in my high school class, where I'd applied under the binding Early Decision deadline sight unseen.

For the past few years, though, I've been lucky to have a good motley of friends and community around me. Lucky, and probably complacent. Job hunting has recently come to a broil, and I'm sure the prospect of adventure will factor into the decision-making somehow.