The Daily Pennsylvanian decided the best and worst of Penn this semester

I am four years older than the kid that cried at the airport, four years more certain of who I am and four years more confident. But I’m not quite sure of all that much, except that the past four years have been good.

Graduation is the nudge that gets us out of college and into the real world.

I’ve been impressed, engaged and inspired by the Penn community. Now it’s time for a new crop of wide-eyed freshmen to have that same chance.

Cleaning my room hasn’t been much of a priority during college. Because to be messy, to blur the lines, is the privilege that Penn — and my parents — have given me. (Love you, Mom and Dad!)

People are surprised when you tell them you’re in Wharton. You don’t seem the type. There’s definitely a type.

Words in a column, book or a speech, for that matter, mean nothing without action to supplement them.

At 15 years old, I already harbored fantasies of bylines containing my name. If that were the whole story it would, of course, be a very boring one. My path up till now must look nauseatingly straightforward from the outside. But like most students, my years at Penn have been anything but simple and very different from what I expected.

Three seniors have been invited to participate in NFL camps this past week.

Vince isn’t ready to let go of the game he’s been playing since his bam-bam bat days.

A group of 20 Penn students spent their spring semester “being surrounded by noise [while] trying to be silent.”

Founded in South Korea by Sun Myung Moon in 1954, the Unification Church spread to the United States in 1971.

Mindy and Jonathan Gray, both 1992 College graduates, have donated $25 million to create the Basser Research Center, a new cancer research center focused on researching BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

A handful of actively engaged venture capitalists have helped strengthen Penn’s connection to the world of startups and entrepreneurship on several levels of university life, from the Engineering School to Penn’s endowment.

I also leave having swallowed my share of reality doses when it comes to my dream job. I like to label them with #LifeOfASportswriter.

A few weeks ago, a tweet from Penn football’s standout kicker and 2011 graduate Andrew Samson hit me like a train.

As my four years as a Penn student draw to a close, I can safely say that my often-tumultuous relationship with the DP was a lot like finishing an 8K race with one shoe.