This will be my final weekly column for The Daily Cardinal. I will be studying abroad next academic year in the former Yugoslavia, spending one semester in Croatia and the other in Serbia-Montenegro.
Though I am extremely excited for the coming year, I must also face the reality that, as one experience of a lifetime is ending, another is beginning.
When I return to Madison, I will be a high-and-mighty senior. My friends will be a stone's throw away, but they won't be down the hallway. Plopping down on someone's futon when I need a study break will be a thing of the past, as will sneaking bulging gym bags into dorm buildings and hoping no house fellows realize that the Coke in my Coke bottle isn't just Coke. Socializing will no longer be as easy as dropping by the den or wandering into whatever rooms are open. In short, college life,as I know it will only exist for one more week.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. There is a time and place for everything, and while the looming end to dorm-life camaraderie with close friends is bittersweet, I don't find myself longing for it to go on forever. I feel ready for a different kind of experience now, and I am content to preserve my dorm experience in memory.
So much of college is transitory and fleeting. We're here for a more or less fixed amount of time, and we're here primarily so we can be in a better place later. Some would argue life itself is the same way.
Perhaps what I find somewhat unsettling about that notion is that it frames college life as a goal to be achieved, not an experience to be savored.
Certainly, being goal-oriented is useful; it's how we evolve and improve ourselves. If there was no competitive element to life, no drive to risk failure in the pursuit of success, we would never become more than what we were before. If I hadn't pushed myself to study hard in high school, I wouldn't have gotten into this school, and if I hadn't buckled down on the homework the past two years, I wouldn't be embarking on a foreign adventure next fall.
But if I were to evaluate my college experience solely on the basis of future opportunities I have created for myself through getting decent grades, the last two years would be nothing more than a bus ride, a place in which I tolerate existence for a temporary amount of time so that I can get to somewhere else.
I don't see college that way at all. I will probably forget most of the information I'll be writing down in blue books next week, just as easily as I would forget an ad I saw on the side of a bus.
What I will remember, however, is the bevy of quirky happenings and (literally) sophomoric hijinks that gave life flavor.
I will remember the middle-aged man dancing at Camp Randall Stadium, prompting students to chant, \Old Guy's Awesome!"" I will remember seeing Oscar the Grouch on Halloween, slammed against a wall, handcuffed and dragged away in a squad car, metal trash can still around his body. I will remember my friend and me singing ""Sweet Caroline"" into the video camera of a random girl on State Street and realizing the next day that somewhere out there is hard evidence that the incident occurred. I will remember when someone on my floor ordered 500 boxes from the U.S. Postal Service and then assembled them all and barricaded the hallways with them from floor to ceiling. I will especially cherish the colorful and frequently entertaining sentiments of readers who have called me, among other things, ""a hypocritical and ignorant liberal,"" ""a typical liberal,"" ""an armchair liberal,"" ""an elitist liberal bully,"" ""a brown-noser,"" ""a brainwashed drone"" and ""an avowed opponent of those who struggle for social justice.""
Those are the sort of experiences I'll savor. As you bear down for finals, don't forget that not all of this life is about the goal. You can spend a lifetime working hard to get somewhere else, but there is a limited amount of time in which you can bask in the sheer joy of being a juvenile college student.
So farewell for now, and in the spot-on words of the Eagles, take it easy.
Nick Barbash is a sophomore majoring in political science and international relations. This is his last column for The Daily Cardinal. Send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
