As another semester comes to a close and the cold weather leaves us, no one does any work, seniors graduate and summer arrives on our doorstep.
A lot of students are ready to skip the last month of the school year and get out of town. At the same time, everyone talks about how crazy it is to be done with another year. It seems like Camp College was last weekend, right?
You just moved into your dorm room for the first time, just got back from Winter Term, just joined (or didn't join) a house. And now you're calling yourself a sophomore, junior, senior, alumni.
College is what a lot of people would call the best four years of their lives. Not only is it better than summer, but it is a very simple existence.
We're all poor. Individually, that is. During the school year, most students don't have jobs. And if they do, the income is little to nothing in comparison to what they make in the summer and what they will make after graduation. We also have Mom and Dad to float us cash when necessary. Anyway, we make almost nothing ourselves. We're penniless.
We have tiny living quarters and share nearly everything. Most of us don't even have a room to call our own. We don't have studio apartments, homes or mansions. Whether living in a greek house or student housing, we share our living space. We share a toilet, couch, food, clothes, everything.
Not to mention, we live together in huge numbers. Dorms and greek houses range from forty or fifty to hundreds of individuals in the same building. Nothing is private, people are loud, and there are rules. We give up a lot of liberties for the community.
And that's the reason we can live with nothing and love it: community. As college students, we spend every moment with our peers. At DePauw especially, the community is so small that everyone knows each other. As a result, we become addicted to interaction and only realize how much we miss it when it's not there-the summertime.
And for seniors, graduation. Then it's time to move away from Greencastle for good. No more frat parties. No more chill sessions on the futon. No more drunk Marvin's. No more DePauw.
After DePauw, we're all going to go out into the world and change it. We're all going to make money and live well and be able to afford nice things. We'll have our own homes, jobs and lives. We'll achieve everything that we're at DePauw to achieve. But we'll never again have the same community experience as we do now.
Summer is approaching fast. When it comes, let us consider it a snapshot of life after DePauw, a preview. It should remind us of just how valuable each day at this school is.
As we come upon the home stretch and stress over finals, lets take the semester's end a day at a time. There won't always be days left.
-Pitts is a sophomore English writing major from Indianapolis.