| Editorial: '100 days' a bittersweet celebration
This past Friday I wandered over to Johnny’s, mildly interested in what the Alumni Association had been promoting to me practically since September – the 100 Days celebration for seniors. � days until you walk!” the posters and flyers read, happily rejoicing in the fact that the class of 2003’s time at Calvin is almost up. The cheery clip-art of graduates throwing their caps in the air seemed to be everywhere.
Inside Johnny’s, I was surprised by the scene that greeted me; the place was packed, with people even mulling around in the aisles. This surprised me for a myriad of reasons. For one, the event was held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, when most students would rather be elsewhere. In addition, most seniors live off campus. Most off-campus students rarely get involved with events happening on campus anymore, so to see this kind of turnout was astounding.
It was also rather melancholy. True, many people there were probably lured by the $100-dollar bill drawings or the chance to win a DVD player. But a significant amount were indeed there to celebrate “the beginning of the end,” a time when they would be turning in their undergraduate lives for the promise of a bigger and better world outside the school. I was not among this group.
For me, the world beyond college doesn’t seem like something that I particularly want to rush into. For one thing, there’s much more responsibility and less idle time – jobs, careers, and families will all demand far more time than classes and student organizations. But don’t mistake this for fear or sloth – the real reason that the 100 days celebration is so melancholy is because it doesn’t for me represent so much the dawning of a new era as the hesitant closing of an old one.
I’ve made many friends and had four years of very enriching experience here at Calvin. I remember fondly the opening activities the first few days I moved into dormitories; the long talks with people on my floor, the games and floor dates we went on, and the fellowship we built. I remember the student organizations that I got involved with and how many new people and perspectives I met through that. I remember the professors that have helped to shape my education.
What I remember most, though, is the distinct feeling (even up to the present) that somehow life beyond college is still very far away. But for we soon-to-be-graduating seniors, it is not far away at all. In fact, it was 100 days away last Friday.
I wish there was some way that I could savor those 100 final days in a way that would be memorable and visionary. But I know truly enough that most of those 100 days, like the many hundreds of days at Calvin that have come before them, will pass without much notice until they’re all gone. There will still be homework and classes to keep me busy, still a newspaper to put out, and many other routine things that will consume those final days at Calvin.
In some way, I feel like I’m being robbed, because I want to seize these final days. But there is no way to. And even though I say to myself sometimes, “If I had it to do all over again, I’d savor the time much more appreciatively,” the truth is that if I could repeat my four years at Calvin, I’d probably do almost exactly what I did the first time around.
Why? Because I know that in the end, I’ve made the most of my time at Calvin. I’ve squandered and wasted many hours, but I’ve also grown in ways that I could never have imagined. For some, high school is the turning point in their lives. For me, it’s been college.
I stood off in a corner during most of the 100 Days celebration, just looking around at all the people, my fellow seniors, surrounding me. I recognized most; I smiled at, greeted or chatted with many. I saw old friends from high school; I caught up with an old suitemate from freshman year whom I hadn’t seen in ages. And while our sentiments were roughly the same, namely: “I can’t believe we’re almost graduated,” our tones were strikingly different. They thought the 100 days was an exciting milestone; I viewed it as a somber reminder that my time here at Calvin, which only four short years ago had stretched out endlessly in front of me, was suddenly within months of completion.
I’m happy for those people for whom the end of college is the greatest and best thing that could ever happen to them. I’m amused when I see my peers making the graduation countdown page the homepage on their computers. But the college must realize that this mindset does not prevail among every senior. Some of us feel like we’ve just gotten started, or that the college has given us so much that we feel the need to do something in return. Please don’t be in such a hurry to usher us out the door. I, for one, want to savor my last 100 days at Calvin.
-bh
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