Personal growth rivals academic honors

By Jason Siegel     8/21/08 7:00pm

This, matriculants, is your new beginning. Doubtless before today you have been told of the formidable ride ahead. Independence, midnight food runs, walks of shame, all-nighters, lectures, dorm rooms, freedom, flip-flops, keg stands, new friends, books, class. As if swallowed into the depths of another dimension for four years - give or take - to slosh in the presence of anarchy before being spat out into some vanilla society, this is your college experience. The Real World awaits with its system, its responsibilities, for the day you stumble defenselessly from behind the protection of the Sallyport. And when you do, let there be no mistake: Playtime is over; you are an adult.Don't buy it.

You may have been told your mission as a student is to soak up the rays of knowledge bound to pummel you from every direction, emanating from textbooks, from friends, from late-night drunken epiphanies. This much, at least, is true. But you may also have been told that education is a stage, a prerequisite, a duty even. As a graduate, as a person in The Real World, you will no longer have the luxury of freedom, for you will be weighted by bills, by family, by careers. The end of college is another beginning, but this time as an adult. But believe with the force of the fiery sun that brings the new dawn that there are no more beginnings, for this is the last. This is the time when you will embark on your adventure of a lifetime.

Prepare for graduation as not another beginning but as a gunshot, an instant at which you are finally unleashed from the Hedges as a warrior for your cause. So learn to push the limits of your clever mind, to challenge your most deeply held beliefs, to steal moments with the people who matter, to find happiness in everything you do. Resolve to make your college experience your personal training ground so you may emerge from these years as not a pawn in the system, but as a leader, an innovator, an individual of distinction and, most importantly, as a better person. In your college, find comfort. In a chance happening, find your passion. In your future, find possibility. You, as a matriculant of one of the nation's most prestigious universities, have been plopped into a bubbling bath of opportunity. But for the world's brightest, education and action are lifelong pursuits.

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So if that leap up ahead ever seems like the beginning of the end of your life, light your plans afire. The Real World, in fact, does not exist.

Jason Siegel is a Martel College senior.

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