The final crush

Sitting here, writing the last thing I will ever write as an undergraduate, I find myself faced with the daunting task of trying to compose something that sums up an entire era of my life. What strikes me as I prepare to don the cap and gown is how much I've learned at

college. I don't mean in class - that's questionable - I mean in college.

From Animal Behavior to Latin American Poetry to Race and Ethnicity in America, I feel proud to have run the academic gamut over my four years. But as much as I relish being able to drop esoteric knowledge in casual conversation and read scholarly texts the way a scholar might, these are not the things that I will really be bringing with me when I cross over into the real world. No, it's all the things they didn't teach me that have taught me so much.

I've learned to learn for the sake of learning. Being surrounded by some of the brightest minds of my generation, I have been exposed to people with passion, people who care deeply for things I could never imagine caring about at all. And bearing witness to this passion I have discovered within myself a thirst for knowledge I never knew was there. It's not about grades. Grades haven't been of much importance to me; my transcript will tell you that. It's about absorbing as much information as I possibly can while it's all still at my fingertips.

What could be better than a life wherein one can wake up each day with nothing to do but to learn something - anything - about the world around him? And what could be better than to be surrounded by hundreds of other probing intellects? It's an illuminating experience to sit around with a bunch of kids, guzzling beer and scarfing pizza, playing video games, and to realize suddenly that you are discussing foreign policy or the work of Gertrude Stein. While it might not be the Girls Gone Wild college encounter that usually comes to mind, it's the careless hyperintellectualism that truly runs rampant on this campus. I appreciate being in a place where I can make a nerdy science joke and have someone besides me get it.

This brings me to something else I have learned: as trite as it sounds, home really is where you make it. I hate Boston. Let me repeat that: I hate Boston. And the suburbs, well, they don't jive with me either. And yet, somehow, I simply don't want to leave here. I live in a dilapidated century-old, two-family house off-campus, and I am in no rush whatsoever to get back to my high-rise apartment in Manhattan.

The undergraduate years are tumultuous and tenaciously dynamic; summer and semester breaks ensure that no college kid is stationary for more than a few months at a time. But

finally I feel settled. For the first time in a long time I feel comfortable. And here I am, preparing to move yet again, this time into a wholly uncertain future. I can take solace in one thought: if I can make Medford my home, I can make any place my home.

Quite honestly, I didn't think I could do it. I remember sitting in my freshman dorm room at the end of my first semester, searching other schools' websites for transfer information. Ultimately I decided that leaving Tufts wouldn't solve the problem, and though it took me a while, I became satisfied with that decision.

Indeed, today I can say that I am glad I stayed. But it's not that I realized that Tufts was the right place for me. On the contrary, Tufts' reputation aside, it wasn't a great choice for me academically speaking. However, if I hadn't been here, if I hadn't stuck with it, I wouldn't have met the intelligent, driven, funny, thoughtful, insightful people who have become my friends over these past years. The relationships that I have forged - with Tufts as a catalyst - have erased any doubt in my mind as to where I belong.

And on top of it all, I have learned so much about myself. College is a microcosm of the rest of the world. With Tufts as my model, I have had to face pressure and stress, responsibility, many a judgement call, interpersonal conflict, and resolution, fear, loneliness, elation, freedom, and so many other considerations of the human condition.

But it hasn't been a mere dress rehearsal. No, it's all been real, the pride, the disappointment, and everything in between - it's all been very real. But it's been safe. I knew this was my time to learn, my time to make mistakes.

And I'm glad to say, as I leave, that I have done both.