Category: Memories

Nos­tal­gia and a bit of psy­cho­analy­sis.

Senior Year was by far my best year of col­lege. My grades were superb, I had a room all to myself, the foot­ball team under the new tute­lage of Tyrone Will­ing­ham, was 10–2, and to crown it all off, the fenc­ing team won the nation­al cham­pi­onship, and I get a ring out of it!

It start­ed out inno­cent­ly enough, fall semes­ter is always ridicu­lous­ly busy, and mine was more so than usu­al since I was tak­ing an Inter­me­di­ate Film Pro­duc­tion class, a class my pro­fes­sor described more as about stress man­age­ment than mak­ing an actu­al film. The foot­ball sea­son was spec­tac­u­lar, and reju­ve­nat­ed the with­er­ing ND spir­it. The last home game as a senior was against Rut­gers, the same team we played at my first ND game, when I was 16. I cried after­ward.

I also got to trav­el with the fenc­ing team, some­thing I would have done the pre­vi­ous year, apart from my dis­lo­cat­ed knee inci­dent. This was quite enjoy­able, though it did eat into my week­ends con­sid­er­ably. Most of the rides were by bus, but the flight to the Duke Duals in North Car­oli­na was great. And then I have the hon­or of being named the Knute-Rockne Schol­ar Ath­lete, and receiv­ing the DeCicco/Langford Inspi­ra­tion award. Not only that, but a pic­ture of me, and a lit­tle blurb accom­pa­ny­ing [sp?] it was put on the wall between the Foot­ball Office and the Bas­ket­ball Office.

Grad­u­a­tion was a bit of a dis­ap­point­ment, the cer­e­monies were a drag, the Bac­calau­re­ate Mass, and the homi­ly that went with it, seemed focused on try­ing to con­vince us to donate mon­ey to the Uni­ver­si­ty, and the speech by Sen. Richard Lugar, was com­plete­ly inap­pro­pri­ate. He did not address the grad­u­ates except in pass­ing, and focused on a pro-war for­eign pol­i­cy speech bet­ter suit­ed to the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee than a notably anti-war Catholic cam­pus.

It was, how­ev­er, quite nice to have my fam­i­ly show up at the cer­e­monies.

This is what I learned in col­lege:

  1. How to make banana bombs.
  2. That the breeze­way always smells like wet dog
  3. Once you find out a girl likes you, it is already too late to do any­thing about it.
  4. It is quite pos­si­ble to climb the walls of the dorm, pro­vid­ed your shoes have enough trac­tion, you have strong wrists, and ample lever­age.
  5. The only time the Grot­to is emp­ty is when the weath­er is too intense for even the town­ies.
  6. Quar­ter Dogs are like very cheap crack, and much more dan­ger­ous.
  7. While you might be able to drink 12 oz of Cuer­vo, pol­ish­ing it off with a shot of Ever­clear is not intel­li­gent.
  8. No one cares about fenc­ing, even the friends of fencers.
  9. It is only accept­able for women to write poems about rape.
  10. How to think