Op-Ed
The End of an Era
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Don't Miss Out
May 4, 2007 - 2:48amI have a second-hand orange sweatshirt that’s probably older than I am. The “Champion” logo on the breast has unraveled over the years. The material, which now molds to my upper-body frame, has withered down to the thinness of a t-shirt. The sleeves are ripped from years of wear and tear. When I stick my thumbs through the holes on each cuff, I’m reminded of the long, intimate history that my Orange Champion and I share. I was wearing it the day I got accepted to college, the night I slept in the basement of my sorority house as a pledge and the only day Cornell ever canceled classes due to snow. It’s my favorite piece of clothing.
Last Wednesday night, the sweatshirt sparked a conversation among my friends and me about life after “parent’s weekend.” (We prefer not to call it graduation for denial’s sake.) We were gathered around a table at our favorite local bar when one of my buddies asked, “What will Missy do when she graduates and has to retire the Orange Champion?”
I almost choked on my drink. Retire the Champion? What an earth-shattering idea. Pausing to think for a moment, I realized that my friend may be right. I can’t wear the sweatshirt to work, or even on the city streets without looking like a fool. Sporting it at college is another story — I’m a secure senior and campus is my stomping ground. Come June, though, I will be a lowly freshman in the real world. Might it be time to retire the Orange Champion?
If the sweatshirt has to go, another friend noted, then so do most of our wardrobes. I perused my friends’ attire around the table, spotting several pairs of ripped jeans, backwards baseball caps, Converse sneakers and t-shirts featuring Greek letters or inappropriate slogans like “Drink ’til she’s Irish!”
At the college bar that night, we blended right in. But anywhere else in the world, we’d have been a bunch of awkward outcasts. It’s funny to think that pretty soon, these sophomoric outfits will be replaced by button-down blouses, slacks and striped ties.
Our wardrobes aren’t the only aspects of our current lifestyles that exude “college.” We have irregular sleeping patterns and atrocious eating habits. We drink too much, obsess over instant communication, post inappropriate photos on the Facebook and have impulsive tendencies that result in lengthy road trips to see our favorite bands in concert.
If we’re not ready to let go of that lifestyle yet, will we be terribly misplaced in the “adult” world we’re about to enter?
My girlfriend went on a date last night with a 28-year-old MBA student whom she met at a lacrosse game the week before. He thought she was cute and asked her out for sushi. “Is that how it’s done in the real world?” she asked me when calling to report the news. Frankly, I have no idea. I’m accustomed to inexperienced fraternity boys whose finest form of courtship is to grind against their prey on a sticky dance floor. The formal dating thing is way out of our league.
Another friend of mine graduated in January and began working at a consulting firm shortly thereafter. His abrupt transition from self-destructive college senior to productive member of society was unfathomable to his college friends. This was the guy who never scheduled a class before 1:30 p.m. and rarely changed his clothes. I called him for an update last week. He’d survived the first two weeks unscathed, he said, but slept through his alarm clock last Friday. He woke up at noon and ran to work, praying that no one would notice. Luckily, he wasn’t fired. Perhaps his boss remembered what those first few weeks out of college were like.
Ready or not, adulthood is about to nip us graduates in the behind. We’ve “worn” college down to the thinness of a t-shirt, molded ourselves into the lifestyle and the lifestyle into ourselves. We’re just beginning to understand this life, and it’s all about to change.
But I don’t think I will ever fully retire the Orange Champion or any other aspects of this lifestyle that I love. I’ll stow it away in the bottom of my closet for safekeeping and bring it out every now and then. I’ll open a beer, call a few friends and rehash memories of when I sat with a familiar crowd at a familiar table in my favorite Collegetown bar.
Missy Kurzweil is a senior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be contacted at mek37@cornell.edu. Don’t Miss Out appeared alternate Thursdays.
Turn the page
I could have written this, though not as well, twenty four years ago when I left Cornell. I have learned since then that life is a series of chapters, and for a chapter to be whole, it must end.
One professor said as we were leaving, "You sit here today in May at the top of the world, Ivy League senior engineers, with job offers in hand. By the end of August however, you will all be Junior Engineers, getting coffee for your boss from Purdue. You guys need a dose of the real world, and you'll all have it. Enjoy it."
Spend 90% of youtime looking ahead, and only 10% looking back, or as Bob Seger crooned "...turn the page".
P.S. I have a well worn pair of bright red sweatpants in my bottom drawer.