I've replayed my first day on campus over and over again in my mind for the past week, but no memory can do it justice. Maybe it isn't in the initial campus visits, weighing Bowdoin up against your other colleges of contention, but it surely hits you all at once the first day you actually become a part of the school?I mean, a physical part of it. It's that feeling of coming home that I wish I were coming back to in the fall?instead, I'm moving out.
In light of that fact, I've decided to go ahead and be mature about it; maturity is, after all, assumed to be a key component in the makeup of any college graduate. And so, to take the higher road, I will not give into the raging jealousy that plagued me like a bad case of campus pink eye throughout the whole of accepted students week. Instead, to the entering class and to the classes rising in the ranks here already, I have decided to give up the best of my four years here, in the hopes that when you leave you might suffer the same terrible anxiety, sleeplessness, and heartbreak over the loss of something too special and too close to home.
In trying to lay it out as a complete thought, I confess right off the bat that there isn't one. The happiness in my time here doesn't add up mathematically; it is not the upshot of something carefully crafted or planned. In fact, there is strangeness in this experience that defies logic, random acts and meetings that could have only taken place on this campus and this small town. These experiences have given me what I never knew I wanted and could never have expected to receive.
Case in point: the first-year roommate survey. Obviously some brilliant, strategic achievement of our ResLife team to match up the incoming freshman with the roommates best suited for him or her. I hesitate to use sarcasm here because in some amazing feat that defies logic and the laws of nature, I witnessed the doubtful match-ups, where in all likelihood a quiet book lover, a boy in the band, and a studly athlete would never hit it off, but did. Not only did I witness it, I issued the proclamation that a room like that would never work?especially when that room was my own.
Fast-forward four years, and I am graduating with my two first-year roommates as two of my closest friends. I'll admit, part of it was absolutely the luck of the draw, but there is also something to a certain open-mindedness that goes hand in hand with roommate likeability. Don't come in here expecting to end up with a girl just like your best friend from home sleeping above you in the top bunk. Expectations like that set you up for big disappointments and an even bigger regret that you didn't take your roommate at face value and give into the possibility of forming friendships with new and different people.
Your trips to the dining hall, to the library, to the Union; they become ritual?each small act and short walk becomes your life, and there is opportunity in each of them. In truth, I am probably unlikely to tell you anything that will make or break your Bowdoin experience. Maybe that's the real wisdom in it all: Having watched this thing take shape, I know that the natural rhythm of things on our campus?we have it pretty good?but to help illuminate some of the finer things here, I'll make a few suggestions.
Here goes: Take Coviello, take Briefel. Eating at Big Top on a late Sunday morning is the best cure for a hangover (though don't overlook Mr. Bagel). Go to every home game you can, mimosas in hand, and cheer?loudly (it's embarrassing when Bates buses over more of its own fans on our turf). Go to all of the improv shows you can?you'll laugh, a lot. Try the iced coffee at the Café and become addicted; remember that sometimes saving your skip days till after the big weekend is a better bet?you might be ready to kick things off early Thursday afternoon, but having a day free the Monday or Tuesday after to catch up on work or nurse a brutal hangover can be crucial. Lastly, always get a lobster ticket at the bake?we do, after all, go to school in Maine, so take advantage.
At the end of the day here, a lot of the experience is nuanced?it's kind of like a marathon puzzle. The experience doesn't become illuminated all at once, but the pieces stay with you right up until the end, waiting to be connected to things from the beginning?people you've known, professors you've had, first dates, first (legal) drinks, strangers from your first year whose secrets and stories you count as your own by graduation.
The timeline is dotted infinitely with a trail of things you've witnessed and taken part in; and the entire time, without overseeing the work, it effortlessly becomes this thing that you've made and you want to keep. But it isn't static and it isn't whole, not even now. I guess it all comes down to only one piece of advice: Never succumb to your limited expectations or your first impressions; make this place your home and the people in it will ultimately feel like family. I can sum this sentiment up best, I think, with a nod to a classic film and what has become the adopted philosophy of my dear friends here, and so, as they say, If you build it...