COLUMN: Fling-induced nostalgia for youth

From Mike Silver's, "Master of My Domain," Fall '98 From Mike Silver's, "Master of My Domain," Fall '98 As we all prepare to make a pilgrimage to the Quad this weekend and return to the "atmosphere of bedlam and collective inebriation" that typifies Fling, I find myself nostalgic for the freshman experience. Somewhere between freshman orientation and the end of sophomore year, the reassuring promises of admissions staff members that "undeclared is our most popular major" fade into distant memory. In reality, a stigma exists and "undeclared" becomes analogous to "clueless." As pre-meds struggle with orgo, economics majors battle the dreaded Wharton curve and history majors compete for publication honors, the challenges we endure almost make us long for simple sector requirement classes like astronomy and geology. Rhodes scholars meetings suddenly pop up out of nowhere. You don't have a research job with a professor? Your resume will suffer -- what the hell are you thinking? Of course, our social lives completely change as well. Random social encounters transform into institutionalized loyalty -- to fraternities, honor societies and clubs. Dabbling no longer applies; "testing the waters" turns into 30-40 hour per week commitments. The narrower focus in our lives constricts the group of people we hang out with. As we get closer to these fewer people, the incentive to engage in random social interaction diminishes accordingly. Freshman year taught us about issues -- everyone has them, and we can whittle away every free minute trying to reconcile them. By sophomore year, their severity becomes manifest. People may leave school for good and cause you to question those idealistic notions that you can solve all of your friends' problems. Maybe a little amateurish Freudian technique and a couple of warm hugs really can't cure everything after all. Friends are friends and likely will be for life. But not always. Walking down the hall to hang out with friends used to be so easy. But as an upperclassman, visits to High Rise South or Hamilton Court, though a mere block away, suddenly take on epic proportions. Casual transforms into formal -- gotta pencil the social encounter into the datebook. No matter how much effort you put forth, you realize that proximity really does impact heavily on whether friendships will last -- relationships that initially formed so effortlessly. And something is inevitably lost along the way. But, though it may be clichZ, the true education that any Penn student receives occurs outside of the classroom. The college experience teaches us how to maintain stable relationships, cope and deal with life's pitfalls, adjust to communal living and accept the notion that we will not excel at absolutely everything we try. For many of us, a humbling encounter with reality ensues when our first grade report does not feature all A's. And as things get more complicated, I long for the simplicity and naivete of freshman year, an all-encompassing experience of random social interaction, partying, experimentation and decision-making for the first time without parental constraints. Everyone else seemed just as clueless as I was, and there weren't any consequences for wasting away hours playing pool and ping pong at McClelland. I miss the random screams pervading the courtyard or the times we sat around and posited all possible solutions to the world's problems. Yet effusively longing for the past is depressing. The key is channeling those fleeting memories into something tangible in the present. Gather your friends, put down the beers for a minute and philosophize about life or play Trivial Pursuit. Randomly knock on someone's closed high rise door and say hello. Do something bold -- peruse The Daily Pennsylvanian and attend the meeting of a new club. And when you return to the Quad for Spring Fling, engage in a little self-reflection and about how much you've changed in your time at Penn.