Last week's Feb Club kickoff was just one in a series of reminders that we, the class of 2008, are reaching the end of our time here at dear old Penn. Are you sobbing yet? Second semester generates wistfulness for the glory days of underclassman life, turning cynics into saps and begging the question: was it really so much better in the past?
If hindsight is 20/20, seniors may need to get their eyes checked. By selectively magnifying the good and disregarding the bad, we fraudulently make college into a unilaterally positive experience. Hellish weeks of midterms, torturous pledging rituals and the falling out with your former best friend are glossed over in the sentimentality of senior year. Often, this practice proves misleading and maladaptive. Many of my fondest "memories" are not memories at all but rather amalgamations of rumors and popular narratives superimposed onto a specific event. "Remember Halloween '04? Remember Monte Carlo? Remember Hey Day?" Well, no, as a matter of fact, I don't. Herein lies another problem with the recollection of college life: nostalgia is a bit impractical when you can barely remember anything at all.
So why all the reminiscence? Perhaps technology is to blame. With such visible reference points of the past - digital photography has allowed us to track every Penn homecoming and athletic event, even the ones we did not attend - we glamorize these earlier times, yearning for a two-dimensional reality that was never as wonderful as it now appears. Besides, doesn't everything look better in sepia? If you've managed to survive to this point with your hard-drive intact, combine this with three years worth of Word documents, e-mails and mp3 collections and behold, 250 GB of nostalgia. right at your fingertips.
Or maybe this phenomenon is societal, a product of the premium our culture places on youth. When Us Weekly's cover story features "Hollywood's New It Girls!" and you are older than all of them, it's hard not to feel more like a senior citizen than a senior in college. This trend, coupled with our persistently positive spin on the past, breeds bitterness and jealousy. "Freshmen and sophomores: Stay where you are! Seize the day! This is your prime!" (Sorry, juniors. It's already too late for you.)
It's not that we should reevaluate our attitudes toward the past. Rather, we ought to embrace the future with the same enthusiasm that we possessed as incoming freshmen. Scary as it may be to move forward -- to contemplate that we will vote in our second presidential election and wake up before noon every day - we must accept the notion that Penn exists independently of our experiences here. And, for the superstar Feb Clubbers whose names will be engraved on a plaque at Smoke's, your legacy will indeed live on even after we graduate. So enjoy; just don't forget to BYO Kleenex.
