"College is the best four years of your life."
I cannot bear to define this statement as a true one. Doing so would mean admitting I am roughly 52 days away from ending the greatest chapter of my life.
Any adult past the age of 23 defends the validity of the statement with the only card that can't be trumped: age. "Well, enjoy it while you can son, I've lived quite a few more years than you so I know; it truly doesn't get any better than this." It's as if it makes adults feel better to reveal this hideous truth to wide-eyed college students. Their action is akin to bullies exposing Santa's true identity on the playground. And like the naïve and unfortunate children whose eyes fill with tears as they are exposed to the bleak reality of what was once a beautiful fantasy, I am inconsolable. Nothing gold can stay, and college is no exception.
The most terrible part about the phrase is that any college student in America can recognize its legitimacy. College, in a word, is paradise. The only punishment for heading to Chipotle instead of geography class is one less chance to do the same thing. The only downfall to treating Tuesdays like the weekend is a rough Wednesday morning. The only really annoying job that must be accomplished is laundry. So maybe it's true, these four (for some, five) years may be the final chocolate in a box of freedom we've been enjoying since childhood.
The good news is there is no way to know. Things may not get better, but maybe they will. To console myself about the utter loss of freedom that is about to take place in my life, I pretend I will look back at these years and scoff, that I will find the foolish significance I placed on them feigned, trivial and meaningless. Comforting, but I doubt it.
As I drink my final beer at Brick Street Bar and eat my last Bagel and Deli, I have no doubt the thought of something greater will be difficult to grasp. College inevitably will end, life will continue, but if this change is inescapable, why approach it with such dread? Better to dream of greater things to come than fear a life of monotony and boredom.
Perhaps the next Jimmy Fallon is sitting in Upham Hall daydreaming through botany, or the next Jennifer Hudson trudging her way through pre-calculus. Miami University is a powerhouse of brilliant, ambitious and charismatic individuals. We have the tools to achieve things much greater than 14 days of drinking at CJ's. If we're lucky we will reach a place where college is a brilliant memory, but nothing more. There are people that have achieved this feat before us and I suggest we follow in their footsteps. It's doubtful that Ben Roethlisberger longed for his days in Oxford as he stepped onto the field at Raymond James Stadium on February 1, 2009. The Superbowl might be a stretch but if you're not going big, go home.
The grass is always greener on the other side. It's easier for adults to look back nostalgically at a time that was, admittedly, easier. I can still remember complaining about the difficulty of learning cursive in second grade and longing for the coloring books of kindergarten. Our parents are simply doing the same thing: dreaming of a time when they could drink copious amounts and still attend four hours of class the next day, a time when they could stay out until 5 a.m. and sleep until 2 p.m. It's natural to look back, but counterproductive to do it mournfully. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, "Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again … Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear." Here's to wishing for great years, not just four of them.
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