"I thought about it the other day," He laughed, finally giving up on sandwiching one of the messier waffles and setting into it with knife and fork in defeat. "...when someone asked me what grade of school I was going into, or what I'm studying this fall, and I realized I'm telling them I don't go for the third time."

He pauses thoughtfully for a moment, scribbling a little on the journal-cover corner.

"...you don't think it's a bad choice, right? Not to go to school? People always say stuff like, 'you're wasting an opportunity'. I still see it the other way around."