Jordan Rambles about leaves and other things

I love leaves. I always feel inclined to pick up really beautifully colored ones from the ground, or the tree and press them in a book. But then I remember that if I press them they'll turn brown and loose their beauty even quicker than if I left then where they are. I guess you can't save everything. Even polaroids, they fade with time and even before they fade they're nothing but a cheap imitation of what was. The colors are less vibrant and the lines begin to blur. A picture has limitations. A picture can't catch the crisp morning air or the pale autumn sun or the smell of dewey grass or the weight of your backpack as you stare at the trees nor the feeling that people are staring at you staring at leaves. I'm in the reminiscent mood because this (I'm guessing music) student is playing a reflective tune on the piano behind me. You know the kind, "Casablanca...ish". And I'm reading "Song of Solomon" for class. I love this book but it skips seemingly huge spans of the characters lives from chapter to chapter. In chapter 3 the protagonist is 22 and the next chapter he's 31. It's as if the chunks of time between the chapters don't matter, or that it goes so quickly that it's not worth mentioning. I've come to realize that I've wasted my teen years. I didn't party, nor did I have nearly as much fun as I should have had. I only had one opportunity to have experienced teendom and I unknowingly threw it away. I'm trying not to do the same with my college years but I don;t really know how not to, almost everyone here annoys me in some way or I don't think I could really relate to them. If it doesn't work out I'm going to devote my time to my studies so that I can say "Well I didn't have many friends but I got the most academically from my college experience." Then I could at least have fun with trips and scholarships and things of the like, eventually getting a free ride to NYU Graduate School and working at a non- profit in some exotic land.