Welcome. Welcome back. Some of you are seeing Whitman with brand new eyes. I, as a senior, have as much to discover as you do. This place changes every year, and you come back having changed in relation to it.
Freshman year, I came with my plastic fork sets, clothes tubs and the Monet-print Kleenex box that would match my poster sale acquisitions. Frat boys (ooh!) helped me move crate after crate up near Theta section in Prentiss.
Sophomore year I was giddy, post-summer, to drive up to the IHC, see Kyle Sullivan Jones on his skateboard and remember Whitman really did exist. I had finally escaped the clutches of food service and could cook my own stir-fries: what bliss! Our friends on meal plans smuggled bananas to us. Soon everyone caught the sophomore blues, though, malnourished and far away in new apartments instead of conveniently crammed in Jewett.
Coming back from a junior year fall in France, I was afraid Whitman had forgotten about me. My special places were no longer my own. A handful of friends had scrawled messages on a Whitman-sent postcard, and the rest I revered from afar in their Facebook sagas and the Whitman Magazine. Glorious things happened in my absence. The Pioneer had informed me that friendly employees would greet me at the new Baker Ferguson Fitness Center, and that the towels were actually clean (they were lying). What’s worse, new people took over the cooshy red Co-op couches!
And now, new people live in my beloved Hotel California. New carpet covers its hardwood floors: blegh. Now I’m getting used to Grandma’s House, which is no longer home to too-loved leather couches, punched-in doors or Betas. Whitman changes.
Now, if I were here for the very first time, I wouldn’t believe this place was real. We’ve had international guests all week. Their very first night? Students howled on Ankeny Field while beating spoons and pots and trash cans; the full moon was out. James Most and fellow free spirits stripped and gleefully ran the field. Every house we passed, we were invited in for tours and nibbles of baked treats.
You are very lucky to be in a place full of people like this. Every year has brought novelty. Now, for me, the biggest change is that Whitman no longer seems infinite. I have changed in relation to this place because I will be leaving it. I bet you’ve changed, too. Now it’s not “college,” the great leap, the end-all, but a blessed place to enjoy in passing.
Soon come the Big questions. WHAT WILL I DO FOR A SENIOR ART THESIS? Why do they trust me with all these keys? Do I want to apply for a Watson? One minute you’re sunbathing in the Anderson courtyard, and the next you’re convincing some committee you want to study noodles in Thailand. Me, I want to study gypsy music.
Welcome back. Good luck. I present you with a column privy to my personal research tangents and fetishes. I’ll be seeing you all, and serenading you with gypsy jazz from the library steps come Thursday eve.