‘... and we’ll meet again when the fighting stops’
By eric detweiler
SENIOR Writer

ISSUE: 05/01/07 > OPINION > ‘... and we’ll meet again when the fighting stops’

Senior writer Eric Detweiler is a senior English major.

This college life contains a whole lot of leaving.

I remember the frenetic socializing of freshman year. I was just as ready to meet and be met as anyone, looking over my shoulder for best friends and keeping a sharp eye out for potential soul mates. My schedule was filled with classes that I didn’t want to take and homework I didn’t feel too bad about neglecting. I shook more hands and introduced myself more times in that first semester than I ever have before or since.

Then sophomore year arrived. Out of the hundreds of people I’d met the previous year, I conversed regularly with maybe 10 to 20. People I’d seen three times a day in April had all but vanished come August. The realization that I only had a finite amount of time in which to keep up with so many people hit hard. Whatever happened to the guy who sat next to me in freshman psychology? I could probably find him if I searched hard enough (this was before the days of Facebook, mind you), but that would be at the expense of developing my friendships with the people who’d stuck around. It’s easy to grow cynical regarding the vast number of people one will only ever meet superficially. How many first names have I collected without ever going on to learn anything about the people to whom they were attached? It wouldn’t be so bad if there was some sort of indication that an acquaintance will never become anything more, but how does one approach every new face as both a potential friend and the conversational equivalent of a one-night stand? At first glance, social exhaustion seems like the only realistic outcome. To keep on trying to be friendly, much less love your neighbor, is a daunting task when so many connections are severed almost as soon as they start.

Over a span of four years, I have successfully moved from Kennedy Hall to Bruin Hills: a change in location that’s easily less than a quarter of a mile. How much distance has been covered by the people I’ve met, lost track of, and occasionally found again during that time? Surely more than I can grasp. Now it is time to go for good, to put the undergraduate life behind me and set out for something else. Now that the end is just weeks, just days away, I finally have a sense of which people will be the ones I remember and miss. And now that I know, I have less than a month to spend with them. They will scatter in every direction, they will wander to Europe while I remain west of the Atlantic, or they will stay in Nashville as I cast myself to the wind.

At least now I can finally start settling down, or so I’ve been told. The uncertainty and fluidity of the university are passing away and real life is waiting. Perhaps that would be some consolation if I felt anything like settling. I have no eye into my future, but I have reason to doubt that my next destination will be the last. I am 21, a terrible amalgamation of man and child, finally coming to grips with how little I know about life and everything else. And one of these days I’m supposed to become an adult and start taking charge of this world. Surely this is a joke. Me? My generation? Us? This is not a job for us. Maybe some of the people I’ll be sitting beside at graduation feel ready to go forth and conquer, to carpe every diem that comes their way. I just want a little more time to learn before I have to be.

The challenge, I suppose, is to step back from my selfish self and realize that Belmont and the people I’ve met here will not disappear the moment I lose sight of them. There have been ideas exchanged, impressions made, flashes of intersubjectivity. Even if I’ve accomplished only slightly more than nothing during my time here, something has indubitably happened. I’ve added Kierkegaard and Walker Percy to my list of authors whose every work I want to read, Belmont has added enough students to fill every coffeehouse in Nashville. I’ve shared thoughts and hopefully encouraged some folks towards goodness; friends, teachers, and strangers alike have thus encouraged me. I’ve learned to live more simply and to value community. Belmont is planning a multimillion-dollar sports complex in the middle of a community that doesn’t really seem to want one. Someone decided it would be a good idea to give me my own newspaper column; hopefully I’ve pushed and edified as appropriate. The university, the people I’ve known, and I will all be changed because of the time I’ve spent here.

A lot of my friends and I are graduating. For those of you who will remain, I hope that you’ll continue to be this university’s primary priority and that you, remaining humble, won’t let that be forgotten. Can I thank Belmont as an abstract entity? I hope so, because there are too many names to do much else…although I am going to salute pretty much every professor in the humanities department. Belmont, I am a little bit older, a little bit wiser (or at least more acutely aware of my lack of wisdom), and a little bit less narcissistic. Thank you. If you were a child, I’d give you a hug and wish you weren’t growing up so darn fast.

Geez, it’s hard to write the last line. The pressure, the gravity of the occasion! How do people finish books? Well, I hope I meant something to someone, and now I suppose I’ll just cop out and quote Garrison Keillor: “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”