Good people courtesy flush. Good people pick up the unused newspapers that pile up in front of their Collegetown home. Good people leave their wet umbrellas by the lecture hall’s door — relax, no one’s going to steal it. Good people are willing to admit to themselves that tea tastes better than coffee. Good people know their history. And, this week, having spent Thanksgiving walking through New York City with fantastic friends I didn’t know a year ago, I think good people should all take a moment to think about how far they’ve come from who they once were. I’ll explain.

Lately, as my penultimate semester comes to a close, I find myself in these deeply nostalgic moods where thinking about “how far I’ve come” feels onerous, but inescapable. I realize that if I don’t remember minute events from the last four years, no one will. As a result, and I’m sure most seniors would agree, the constant question “What are you doing next year?” is becoming increasingly annoying. Who cares? I’d rather people ask me about what I’ve already done.

Unfortunately, except for a file of term papers and a stack of dog-eared books, I have very little proof of what I’ve done. I was never one to keep journals or write in a diary, and I have to ask myself: How can I remember? How can I retroactively archive my own past?

It’s 2 a.m. My online Scrabble partner is taking her sweet time to play her move, and with only four hours left before daylight, both of my roommates have turned in for the night. Because it’s 2 a.m., and because the house is deathly quiet save for the slow patter of rain against my leaking window, I find myself warmly slinking into one of those reflective moods, but as I blindly click around my Mac, the solution hits me.

I realize there’s no better way to explore your personal history than to open iTunes, sort your songs by “Date Added” and perform an archival study of your own anthropology. What was the first song you added to your computer, and why? The most recent? What song did you listen to right before your 21st birthday? What song did you listen to when a loved one passed away? As you got dressed for your first college date?

Remembering all of the events surrounding one’s music unfolds all sorts of strange memories of places we haven’t been in a long time, friends we haven’t heard from in years. Like layers around an artichoke heart, each song has an interesting, long story of how it wound up in our lives. Just as crucial as recording your thoughts in a journal, I believe recalling how you came to have any given piece of music can become a sacred rite.

I know what you’re thinking, and I completely agree. There’s nothing — absolutely nothing — you can tell about a stranger by looking through his iTunes library. In this age of digital music, we all have a collage of assorted music sent to us by our friends, ripped from a neighbor’s collection or given to us in mix-tape format by lazy people in lieu of a proper Valentine’s Day gift. Just about the only thing you can tell about a person from sorting through his music is how diverse his tastes are, and even then you can’t get a good picture of who that person really is.

Just this weekend, in fact, on the traffic-jammed ride from Queens to Ithaca, a friend discovered the sole Gloria Estefan song that I illegally own. I wouldn’t admit to her exactly why I own it, but iTunes could tell her that I added it on 4/17/05 and last played it three days ago. Before you make any snap judgments, I should tell you that lately I keep my iTunes on random all day, and, even so, I’m not at all embarrassed to say that “Turn the Beat Around” is a great song.

But by looking through your music collection alone — especially by looking at the songs you haven’t played in a while — you can get a pretty interesting idea of what sort of mood you were in at any particular moment, and experience a refreshing flood of memories. What songs were you listening to last May during Finals Week? What songs were you listening to on the way back to school in August?

When I sort my collection by “Date Added” I see that the first song I ever put on this computer was “Here Comes the Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze, added April 30, 2004. I remember adding this CD first because it was the first album I ever owned, and I thought it would be appropriate to break in a new machine with a blast from a past that is no one else’s but mine.

A few days after I bought that CD, my father signed us up for an Album of the Month club, and I remember the first CD Columbia Records ever sent us was Green Day’s “Dookie,” quite possibly our generation’s most universally loved album. Weeks later, the first CD I ever bought with my own money was Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It.” Interpret at will.

Chronologically, the next set of music that I put on this computer was a series of Creedence and Grateful Dead singles, added that same day but much later in the afternoon. I remember adding these songs while sitting on the outskirts of a LAN party in my friend Matt’s garage pretending to be interested in whatever smog-machine video game world my friends were playing. I remember uploading these songs while chatting with strangers who had found me on the Class of 2008 website. This was pre-Facebook, kids. I expect that I was on a Big Lebowski kick.

I’m sure everyone with iTunes has a “cheer me up” or “piss me off’ playlist. It might be a fun exercise to exchange these as burned CD holiday gifts just in time for final papers and exams. This week, my ultimate “pick me up” song is “Perfect Gentleman” by Wyclef Jean. What’s yours and would anyone else even tolerate it?

Scrolling down to finals week at the end of sophomore year, May 2006, I recall that I was very homesick and overwhelmed with work. Robbie Williams and Warren Zevon calmed me down. John Denver got me home.

For the exact reason I believe everyone should take some time to ask a special elderly person in their life about anything that they might recall from years ago, I’d advise everyone I know to go through their music collection and try to recreate how they felt, or what they wanted, what they needed when they added any particular song. You’d be amazed what you didn’t remember you hadn’t forgotten.

My most recent song? “Beautiful Girls” by Sean Kingston … I felt embarrassed about the Gloria Estefan and grasped at straws to redeem myself.

Noah Hy Brozinsky is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at nbrozinsky@cornellsun.com. Walk Emily Home appears alternate Wednesdays.