When you stop to think about it, it’s absolutely amazing that the college experience is allowed to exist.
We’re talking about thousands of people in their late teens and early 20s living on a single campus, with even more kids coming in and out from the surrounding community. For the most part, young adults monitor other young adults in a huge community with limited adult supervision.
Really, it just sounds like a bad idea for a reality show. (And if you think it hasn’t been done already, Google search “Kid Nation.”)
But it’s because of this unique situation that many of us have been able to grow from older kids to young adults.
It’s because I was thrown into the fire — and an RA event — that I learned how to do laundry on my own. It’s because of the opportunity here that I’ve been able to feel that thrill of seeing people come out in droves to celebrate a historic election that I voted in.
It’s here that I experienced what it meant to have a basketball team make it to the hallowed March Madness tournament and to storm the court once we all realized what had happened.
It’s in a place like this that at 2 a.m. on a Thursday night, you can find people drunk on State Street, people studying in the Glenn G. Bartle Library and people working in a newspaper office.
And yet, while reveling in how remarkable our situation is, I wonder if we take full advantage of it.
Nearly 15 years ago, a professor told his students, “Gutenberg’s generation thirsted for a new book every six months; your generation gets a new Web page every six seconds. And how do you use this technology? To beat King Koopa and save the princess. Shame on you.”
OK, so maybe that professor was Mr. Feeney from “Boy Meets World,” but it’s still a question worth asking: What have we done with what we’ve been given here?
I look back at four years here and think I’ve done a decent job at making the most of my opportunities. Sure, during freshman year I was the kid who spent nearly all of his time hanging out with old friends from high school, shunning the idea of meeting new people and just hoping to get by.
Now, I’m majoring in math and minoring in chemistry going to medical school. I’ve taken classes on politics, zombies, the world’s energy supply and film noir, plus four courses on humor.
I’ve been the sports editor and a copy editor on Pipe Dream and spent some time working with the Boys & Girls Club of Binghamton. I live with, and near, people who have made it worth it to get out of bed every morning, and I’ve worked on a student-run newspaper with some of the strangest and most talented people I’m ever likely to meet.
There will always be things I’ve missed, things I’ll never have another real chance to do again. I probably should have joined that mob of kids celebrating the election of Barack Obama, tried tray-sledding or checked out more student groups.
But I walk out of here with no major regrets. The key is to experience as much as you can with this opportunity that really only comes once in a lifetime.
In other countries, kids our age are starting revolutions that overthrow governments. We should at least take the chance to find out what living in a “Kid Nation” allows us to do.