Plato's Footnotes

I can feel Bowdoin slipping away. I spent a few hours in the student union tonight, studying for my last act as a Bowdoin student tomorrow (a final in American Political Thought). I read Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, the Founding Fathers and Croly, trying to cram the last testable material I have into my brain. I know I’ll have tests beyond this, there just won’t be any pen or paper and my grade will be a much more intangible approximation of my professional performance. Doing well on tests henceforth will mean performing well in a job or getting a promotion after testing well daily for months and months and months.

I did a circle around campus on my way back to the Tower and I could feel Bowdoin slipping away. I’ve knew this was happening. It reminded me of taking baths when I was young. At the end of a bath, I would open the drain and watch the slow drain of water. At first the loss of water from the tub was almost imperceptible except for the soft grown of the water down the pipe (freshman year). Eventually, I started to notice the water level depreciate slowly, uncovering my knees and shoulders (sophomore year). I would always pay careful attention to watch the little typhoon that formed, swirling and spinning around as the water seemed to empty faster and faster (junior year). By the time the bath tub was almost empty, the water would slosh around much easier and the typhoon would grow bigger. In the final moments, there would be a rush of water and a big, heavy sigh from the pipe as the last rivulets escaped into the pipes below (senior year).

I felt like I could hear the beginnings of that big, heavy sigh as I walked around Bowdoin in the night and watched other students casually wander under irregularly placed lamps on the quad. The typhoon has disappeared and its all washing away.

Regardless of the depressing imagery, its hard not to feel a poignant loss coming on. College ending is more than just about losing contact with friends and finding a job in the “real world”. It’s about growing up and making a compact with oneself that, henceforth, every time you wake up you decide what your life is and what you’re doing and where you’re going and you have few people to blame for any shortcomings but yourself. It’s been very easy for me to ride high school and Bowdoin for meaning, not having to worry about ensuring my own success since I could use the institutions I accepted as my metric of achievement. But my greatest fear, beyond finding a job that I like, maintaining contact with my current friends, finding new friends, finding a place to live, so on and so forth, is creating my own compact, my own metric by which to judge myself and my choices.

It’s scary–terrifying really. Don’t worry about me though. I knew this, as I’m sure you know it. I’m just thinking out loud here. I would say that I’m going to go study some more, but I don’t think that’s going to happen quite yet. I’ll probably see if I can find someone to go for a walk with me, see if I can hear anymore of that impending big, heavy sigh.

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