Ahh early May… that time of year when most undergrads are crying in the library and then skipping home in sweet summer joy. Seniors, on the other hand, are crying into their beers and thinking that if they party and celebrate enough, the impending graduation date (and the prerequisite exams) will painlessly disappear. So, in search of some comfort to help me through this difficult time, I decided to share some words of wisdom I found in the 1967 Georgetown yearbook.

Why was I looking at a 1967 Georgetown yearbook, you ask? Well, in a blatant abuse of key-wielding power last semester, I was studying in the Independent office. The Indy shares its office space with the yearbook and, for some reason, there was one yearbook lying on the Indy’s side of the office. It happened to be from 1967. With a final in a half hour, I obviously decided to cozy up on the couch and saunter down memory lane. Fifteen minutes and a few tears later (I got emotional about graduation early, okay?), I picked up my computer and copied down the poem that a Georgetown student wrote for the first few pages of the yearbook. And so, for my second and last guest appearance in Ben’s Senior Citizenship column, I have decided to share the poem with you. Some of it is comically outdated (there were polo matches?!), but most of it is still relevant. Enjoy.

“The sun is down, but there is still fire in the ashes. A haze has been cast over four years of your burning youth—a haze that, once gone, won’t return.

You arrived as everyman, as anyman. The Walsh doors flew open and the match was struck. The light shone through the lobby windows and you were but an image of what you are today.

That first semester was the greatest ascent—not knowing whether you had climbed far enough socially or academically—not knowing whether you should go up or down.

With each scare, you pushed into that den of silence, that cubicle of solitude, where knowledge was more easily come by.

An unforgotten lecture is still toiling; yes, that lecture that made you forget that you were a student. “If only I…”

But the fire raged. You who knew where it burned, would not tell where it lay.

“I” was the one who saw Thomas Jefferson and Washington in their seats of honor. “I” was the one who rejoiced in exams’ end.

And “I” dwelt in thought with John Carroll, knowing that my stay would be shorter than his.

He watched, she watched, you moved on.

You learned from the one who had the right answers at the right time; you laughed with the one who made the joke.

You paused to attend to the little things; a snow fight or just a daily chore needed as much attention as the trudge to classes.

STOP! Look where your footsteps have led you.

Flowers bloomed; they grew with each year; with each year you grew, and noticed neither.

Those who didn’t find time looked on hopefully; those who did smile knowingly.

The polo games were good, and if you knew the score, you had a pretty poor time.

The expressions—great and terrific—for the social bombasts had dissipated in the heat, and what was left was a pretty good time.

You explored causes and ideals. War and peace presented their cases as you listened.

You continued to circle the globe daily without touching it.

The second semester began, and the rites of Spring were upon you.

The last semester was here, as you began the last lap.

Famous people came and spoke to you, and whether you listened or not, you were impressed.

The campus loomed larger than life—even the dorms became caverns of solitude.

But Gothic architecture does not breed Gothic persons. Georgetown’s gentlemen hold a variety of interests.

As your withdrawal becomes more definite, you can look back to all the images of the university.

There were the people who made it real: the friends. Those who helped you and those who guided you. The life and color of what would otherwise be a dismal place.

The age and tradition of your surroundings brought forth newness and vigor.

For your four years have flown; for others, they are still to come. The sun is down, but there is still fire in the ashes.”

- Kerry Kirschner

The end of the year is upon us, sports fans. That means Georgetown Day, Foxfield, the last class I’ll take in college, and my last-ever paper. It also means that I was too busy last week to work my “Senior Citizenship” magic. People actually seemed to miss it.

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Today, I went to Glover Park Hardware to buy superglue to reattach the door handle to my freezer. The glue didn’t work. FML.

I don’t even know how the handle came off in the first place. These things happen. Coincidentally the drawer next to the freezer crumbled into uselessness a few days ago. Maintenance came in this morning and took the drawer somewhere. Not sure when (if?) we’ll get it back… I feel like a pet owner bringing his pet in for surgery and just sort of leaving it at the vet, unsure if I’ll ever see it again. I don’t know where I’m going with all this. Our Village B is literally coming apart, though. Maybe I can work that into some kind of metaphor… after the jump.

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You know it’s spring when the day begins with pouring rain and it’s sunny and 70 by noon. The Village A rooftops come alive again at night, and Village B parties once more spill into the courtyard. I opened all the windows in our apartment, all the better to hear the frat stars on the other side of the fence who start at 1pm on a Friday. (My other motive is to rid our place of the lingering bacon smell. I’ve been legit dreaming of meat and that may be why.)

Spring is in the air, all right. All of a sudden the trees are more flowery than my prose. I put in an appearance at Tombs last night for the first time in, like, ever. And the other day I tipped scotch while watching a Gossip Girl rerun—inspired, maybe, by the fact that the characters (high school students) drink more than I do as a college senior. So I am, slowly but surely, building my tolerance back up. I’ll need it for Wagner’s 2-thirties-of-Stone-for-$23 “get retahhhded” special.

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Banal title, I realize. I couldn’t resist. It’s a GAAP weekend, so prospies and their harried-looking parents are overrunning campus like a plague of locusts–a plague welcomed by an administration eager to hard-sell Georgetown’s outrageous price tag. I don’t mind the GAAPers: it’s good to see new people around, especially when I wind up running into most of the people I know in a walk across our postage stamp-sized campus.

I’m struck by the contrast between myself and the GAAP participants. It’s one thing to contrast seniors with freshmen, as I’ve done in the past: we are all in college, at least. GAAP kids are just that—kids—eager to finish high school and join the ranks of beer-swilling, louche collegians. I fully expected to see some of them gate-crash the Village B party at which I threw down last night—the rain probably kept them indoors—and had any of them gotten in, I would have freaked a little bit. I haven’t partied with high school kids since… well, since high school.

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I was sort of cleaning out my desk this week and came across a “pink sheet” I was using as a doodle pad. The “pink sheet,” familiar to all MSB students, lists in detail the classes that must be taken to graduate from MSB. The deans’ office, understanding that many of us are flighty simpletons, breaks down required courses into easy-to-understand sections: Liberal Arts Core; Business Core I; Business Core II; and the six majors. (Contrary to popular belief, “Leisure Studies” is not one of them, although it damn well should be.)

Anyway, the running joke in MSB—aside from MSB itself—is that the “pink sheet” runs your life most of the time. And it’s really strange to see my entire collegiate academic experience summated on one side of a single sheet of paper (except for my English minor). There’s History/Government/Classics – I’m remembering “US Since 1945” with McCartin – and Philosophy I & II. Down the list is Accounting I with Ivo Jansen, and Management & Organizational Behavior a little later. I remember the professor’s husband being chill. I also remember that our final project involved something called Maui Wowie – take that as you may.

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So I decided to go unplugged over spring break and leave the ThinkPad at home. (You know you’re MSB when…) Which meant no blogging. Sorry about that—but here’s another installment of Senior Citizenship to keep you sated. I may well post again later in the week, if I’m feeling frisky, so check back or add me to your RSS feed (if you can even do that; I don’t really get “technology”).

Spring break was glorious and sun-drenched—I ran up on Southern California and did California things. I knew it would be a dece week when I got pulled over in my rented Altima literally an hour after getting in. (I somehow neglected to turn my headlights on, even though it was like eleven at night. But in the great Ben Foster tradition I talked my way out of the situation. Word life.) My trip was comic at times, tragic at others – much like life is – and was ended spectacularly with a free ride back from Dulles at 12:30am. (Big shout-out to Sam and her friends from Catholic.)

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Seems like everyone’s celebrating birthdays lately. Why fete the aging process (to be emo in only the second sentence)? I guess everyone loves to party, and at some point people said, OK, birthdays are a good time to do that. I wonder sometimes why it’s not alright to party on Arbor Day, the best day of the year, but I don’t worry too much about it and go back to my Arbor Day revelry. It’s pretty much the biggest time of the year for me and a much-needed counterpoint to the solemn pagan rites I practice at the change of each season. (None of the above was true. [But I am now a vegetarian.])

Anyway, birthdays are a good excuse to party—I went to a half-birthday party earlier this month and a friend’s celebrating being 21 and three-quarters next week. But when you get to college, who needs an excuse? It’s Tuesday? Have a party! Midterms over? Time to throw down! GUSA fails again? Get stupid! Despite our party-heartiness, birthdays are a bigger deal now than they were in pre-adolescence. Maybe because you have all your friends close at hand and readily available alcohol… or maybe it’s something else entirely!

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In my town, dirty snow sits in piles on sidewalks and front lawns. The sky is the color of gunmetal; the cold reaches up to it and seeps indoors at the windows, whose glass rattles against the wind. In the morning the windshield wipers are frozen to the bottom of the windshield, unless we remember to raise them the night before. Our cat sleeps more than normal.

Where I’m from – Massachusetts – winter stretches on interminably. Back in Georgetown, daffodils are nosing upward and spring seems ready to take its first breath. Here it’s cold, cold: next week will be and next month will be, too. Where I’m from people deal with it. You only see countdowns to March 21 on roadside signs at nurseries, whose business will be slow until the earth softens again.

Massachusetts has four months of warm and eight of cold – I never tire of D.C.’s spring beginning in late February. Spring is a time to be giddy, a time to be young and enjoy being young; it can’t come soon enough. Last week I suggested that we Georgetowners need to mellow out a little – to stop and smell the proverbial roses. Spring is the embodiment of that attitude. When the weather warms it gets a lot harder to focus on school and a lot easier to loll about outside.

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Wednesday, 3pm. Sixty-seven degrees. Where else would I be but Booey’s patio with a pitcher of Mick Light? Except maybe for Healy Lawn, Georgetown’s own Met Steps… where I posted up the day before, Saxby’s in one hand and Djarum Black in the other. This week was a little preview of spring weather, and it made me realize just how unproductive I’ll be in the near future. But how is that a problem?

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So I decided it would be prudent to drink less. I didn’t have any big epiphanic moment, nor have I booted recently. (I even kept my shirt clean on New Year’s, remarkably.) No, the grand realization I had was not of my own mortality or nascent alcoholism but that the semester is a long one, and I need to pace myself. Because when the weather finally gets warm, unheard-of shenanigans are sure to ensue.

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December, full of finals and holidays, is also the beginning of winter. This should not be news to most of you – but perhaps you, like me, aren’t really aware of winter until the spring semester starts in January. In December, winter’s ice and snow seem phantasmagoric – natural decoration provided for our holiday enjoyment. Winter is quaint in December, enjoyable even. But with the arrival of the new year, our foolish pretensions are stripped away and we’re left with the awareness that we aren’t cold-weather creatures and winter’s end is almost three months away. January is, both literally and psychologically, the most brutal of times.

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When you get to be my age – on the cusp of adulthood and its concomitant responsibilities – you find yourself assaulted on all sides by needs and desires. You need a job, but you want to fritter your last collegiate days away. You may desire employment – it beats homelessness – but you need to go to class, if you’re at all concerned for your GPA. Sometimes you need and desire the same thing – spending time with friends, maybe – and even that’s hard to accomplish, with everyone’s schedules (not mine) being so full. Seriously, freshmen will soon be coming in with personal assistants. They already have BlackBerries, like an army of eighteen-year-old M&A associates. Dumb freshmen.

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“To deny our past is to deny ourselves” – Blair Waldorf

Blair Waldorf is not a real person – she’s a character on Gossip Girl, as you may know – but her wisdom is prescient. We are the sum of our experiences, and while we may be capable of reinventing ourselves, we can’t abandon our past selves completely. Like snakes, we can shed – old habits, modes of thinking, or even people – and, like snakes, our basic shape remains intact. With shedding comes growth, natural for humans and snakes alike; they are content to leave their skins behind but we find it hard to do the same.

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I was just looking at past “Senior Citizenship” posts and thinking that I mailed it in as 2008 ended. Sorry about that – but in my defense, I was pretty burned out by December. (Just another semester at Georgetown, I suppose.) Last week’s “Resolutions” post – which, you’ll notice, I wrote on Saturday – wasn’t terribly written, but it did sort of ramble. I guess it was a fitting end to fall 2008– four months of drinking, debauchery, and utter cluelessness. I’ve never had a more lights-out semester, but I’m increasingly aware that I ought to man up and take point in the job search this spring.

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