There's an end-of-the-year tendency to focus on those graduating, to offer advice to seniors about entering the "real" world, to let the people who are leaving know how important and wonderful they are and how sorely they will be missed. There are speeches, ceremonies, dinners, cocktails, awards, even an entire week dedicated to seniors enjoying themselves. There is almost nothing in the last few weeks that doesn't focus on the seniors.
But this isn't for them.
After all, there are thousands of other people here at Tufts, and maybe, just maybe, they deserve a little something too. So rather than offering sage-sounding advice about the real world - a concept that no college student can pretend to fully grasp - I offer you a few words on something that I at least understand: college.
College means being exposed to new and different things all the time. It means meeting new people, making new friends, discovering new music, learning new things, living new places, experiencing new...everything.
The seniors don't know it yet, but they're about to start stagnating. Not you, though. You're in the midst of it! You're right in the eye of the goddamn mystical hurricane of culture and knowledge, and it's whipping around you so fast that you can't even focus on anything, let alone grab onto it.
I don't intend to glorify college life any more than I did the seniors. It's a time in your life: you go through it, and you move on. If you're not taking advantage of it, though, you're just stupid. College is full of opportunities, and you cheat yourself if you don't seize - and balance - those opportunities.
There are people around you that hail from all over the world. There are people who listen to different music, watch different movies, wear different clothes, and eat different foods than you do. If you're not meeting these people and learning what you can from them, you're missing out on an opportunity that will never come again.
At the same time, there are people all around you that share your interests, and you have a great shot at making the closest friends you'll ever have. With so many students around you, someone here must understand references to The Simpsons or love the rap of Twista and the Speedknot Mobstaz or adore Hitchcock films as much as you do. Don't sit around and be bored. Find these people!
There are student groups on campus that will let you do things you might never try again. Be a radio DJ? Work in television? Play in a band? Put out a daily newspaper? Star in a Shakespearean play? Dance your heart out on stage? Run a political protest? Why are you wasting your time just sitting there?
It's easy to overlook the academic opportunities (even though they should be the most obvious), but they're profound. You can start fiery discussions about anything on a college campus. Politics, history, psychology, philosophy, biology - you name it, and someone's passionate about it. Take interesting classes, get into debates with people in the Campus Center, stay after class and talk with a professor. You will never be in such an intellectual environment again, and you'll never find so many people willing to discuss things with you again.
And what a consequence-free environment compared to the rest of the world! Wear what you want! Eat what you want! Sleep when you want! You can't slouch into a job wearing pajama pants, sandals, and yesterday's t-shirt. You can't wear interesting clothes just because you want to be interesting.
Look at your life and realize just how much you get every day - things you don't even think about - that you won't get after college. The opportunities to try new things never end here. You're growing, changing, adapting.
So what about the seniors? If you're not uncovering new things, what are you doing? You're doing the same old thing.
Ah, but graduates and seniors, don't start sending the hate mail yet. There's nothing wrong with settling down. There's nothing wrong with figuring out what you like and sticking to it. And even so, you're not set in your ways yet. It's a gradual process.
It does happen, though, and the evidence is all around you. Do your parents listen to your music or the music that they listened to while they were in college? Do they dress like you or (gasp!) like they did in college? Are they stylish or are they outdated?
And if this didn't happen when they left college, when do you think this happened to them, exactly?
But again, there's nothing wrong with it. Look at the coin's other side. Young people are loud, arrogant, and disrespectful. They have no appreciation for what they have. They stay up late, play obnoxious music, and generally piss off a frightening proportion of the people around them. Who wants to be young forever? No one will listen to you, and everyone will resent what you stand for.
Like everything else in life, it's a balancing act. You get four years to do this; make the most of it. Never look back and regret the things you didn't do.
But don't cling to youth as though it will solve everything for you, either. Consider: if you think college will be the best time of your life, why even bother living the rest? The real world is different, yes, but it's not empty or unhappy. You haven't even hit a quarter-life crisis, let along a midlife one.
So it all boils down to this: make the most of every stage of your life. Recognize opportunities and attack all of them. Do everything you can right now, do everything you can tomorrow. When your time to be a senior comes, don't look back and wish you had done things differently. And when you do leave, don't linger on how great college was and how bleak things look afterwards. It's still your life. You should be out there living it.
