Posted by Taylor Dafoe
As classes comes to an end, slowly fading away in that familiar, caffeine-induced haze of evaluations and finals and all-nighters, I can't help but wonder how this semester is going to be remembered. What will we think?
Maybe it'll go down as the semester with all the freshmen - the one with the overflowing dorms and all those triples fighting over the top bunk and the TV, probably so they could watch the newest episode of "Glee". Maybe it'll be remembered for the drunken disasters of Moorebid – for the campus damages, the ambulances and the endless cans of Four Loko. Maybe it'll be the semester the field hockey team went to the Final Four, or the semester Zankel opened or the semester that Glotzbach was gone, witness to only some of these events.
Or maybe it won't be remembered for any of these things; maybe they mean nothing to you.
We talk so much about the Skidmore "bubble," the idea that we're locked perpetually in this tiny college and tiny town, that you would think we would have the drive to do something about it. Our lives are defined by the walls that make up our little world here on campus that often we forget about that world outside Skidmore and Saratoga. We forget about issues that aren't on the chalkboard and about things that make us happy. And all those trips to the dining hall and textbooks rotting away in the bottom of our backpacks - they're only making it worse.
We need to reevaluate ourselves as college students. Our school is far too dominated by these warped notions of college life – ideas that have us killing ourselves with books during the week and with beer on the weekends. We need to reconsider why we're here, what we're doing here and what we're going to do in the future – how we're going to spend our years here at Skidmore.
Keep this in mind as you're taking your last tests and writing your last papers. Don't get too consumed by any one aspect of your Skidmore experience, not the classes nor the parties. Remember that stress is fleeting and that homework gets finished. Remind yourself that this is merely a moment of your life, not the whole thing.
So this winter break, think about all these things. Think about what it's like to be home again, away from dorms and classrooms and the library – away, finally, from our campus. Take in a little bit of the outside world and bring it back with you. Let's make next semester worth remembering, worth the nostalgia for college that will inevitably come in the years following graduation – the years in that real world.
Happy semester, everybody. Good luck with finals.
Taylor Dafoe is an undecided sophomore from Cheyenne, Wyo.