A good chunk of my first-ever article for North by Northwestern is nonsense. Not just because the analysis is poor or the writing makes me cringe (though both are a little bit true), but because about 20 percent of the links no longer work. I use links heavily because this is a digital publication and we are living in the future and also because I prefer linking a source over having to paraphrase it, because I am lazy. When the links go offline, the piece loses a fair amount of meaning.

The nerds call this phenomenon “link rot,” the process by which links to other webpages gradually turn up unhelpful or empty results as websites go offline, change their URL structures or move content around. A 2011 survey of links on one bookmarking site found that within 14 years, about 50 percent of links no longer led to a working page. Another study found that 70 percent of links in Harvard legal journal articles and 50 percent of links in Supreme Court opinions no longer provide their intended information. It happens here; we’re already missing some pictures from the 2015 commencement project.

This is, we are told, a significant issue. After all, the internet now substitutes in many ways for the great libraries of old, and generally information set down in books doesn't just disappear (except when it does). And for some works, it is a genuine issue; if we can’t make sense of Supreme Court citations, our whole system of laws starts to look a little suspect.

But right now, with the artificial nostalgia and self-reflection of graduation running my life, I can't help but feel that this decay is a blessing in disguise. I don't know about you, but I'm not a huge fan of me from four years ago; he meant well, but also he did dumb things. I'm sure I'll feel the same way about graduating-me in four years, too.

College is supposed to be about building for the future: improving the school for those who come after us, sharpening career skills, making friends who will last a lifetime. Those are all great, and if you've pulled any of them off, that's incredible. Congrats, sincerely. The reality, though, as any of us can attest, is that the dominant question of student life isn’t whether you can make or build or learn something worth preserving, but whether you can make it to next week or tomorrow or at least 5 p.m.

Most of what the Class of 2016 did will fade with time. Yearly student turnover makes institutional memories short, and the treachery of personal memory will mess with what we take with us. I’m already seeing names in my Facebook feed to which I can’t put a face or a fact. And even if I could, there’s no guarantee that information would reflect things as they are right now. The links have gone dead.

So instead of trying to avoid link decay by building perfect memories and taking perfect pictures and writing something that’s not a mess of hyperlinks, I’m leaning in to it. Let link rot take my memories and Facebook photos and this essay; they work for right now, and that’s good enough. There’s a pressure I feel to use this space to try to say something that feels deep and meaningful, that won't embarrass me with dated references or short-sighted predictions when I dig it up in a year or two, that won’t feel silly and self-indulgent. But I can't do that, no more than I can pick a graduation outfit I won't be disappointed in after ten years.

So instead, I just hope this is good enough for right now.