Reflections on a year since graduating college

Lording over my former domain

It is something of a cliche by now to quote William Faulkner's famous lines: "the past is never dead. It's not even passed." But every cliche emerged from some truth, and was true at some point, even if it isn't anymore, or has become stale. Yet I don't think this quote has become untrue or stale. I think people just became tired of being reminded of it, because it was and remains a truth that hurts.

The undead past has certainly hurt me over the past year, anyway. Since I graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2015, and even more so since I moved to Washington, D.C. for my first post-collegiate job that July (my first day of work was the day before my 22nd birthday), the past has haunted me. Like some horror movie villain, I cannot seem to kill it; every time I think I have escaped it, it pops right back up.

It doesn't help that I am an unusually time-and-past-conscious person (a trait that Facebook's "On This Day" feature has only sharpened). Nor does it help that I still feel like I am on a school calendar, even though my life's calendar doesn't work that way anymore. Thus, I have spent most of the past year both considering what I was doing on this day/at this time the year before, and somewhat envious of my friends still at campus doing what I once did. And much as a tsunami compresses and gathers strength just before it crashes against the shore, the wave of "on this day" anniversaries has only increased in my life over the past month as I near a full year in this new chapter of my life: one year since my last college race; one year since I cut my senior year of college long hair; one year since I interviewed for the job I now have; one year since I graduated; and one year since I drove away from Hillsdale for the first time as an alumnus. One year since, one year since, one year since...

Hoping to achieve some level of separation from the past, I reserved tickets many months ago for a tour of the Washington Monument last weekend. In a bit of the sort of symbolic, quasi-poetic bookending that I always seek in life, I would summit the Washington Monument on the same day that this year's graduates of Hillsdale College would join me as alumni. But life, as John Lennon once said, is what happens while you're busy making other plans. And last Saturday, the elevator of the Washington Monument had others plans: i.e., to break, denying me both entry and closure. Oh well. At least I got pizza.

Me last weekend, deprived of an opportunity for symbolic closure

All the world's pizza, however, can't help me escape the past. And to exorcise the thoughts that have rattled around my brain over the past year--thoughts that I am, at the same time, loathe to excise, given how paradoxically tightly I cling to the very same past I am trying to escape--I must try to do it the only other way I know how: by writing. I could say many things about my "college experience"--the friends, the experiences, the education, the running--but for symbolic potency nothing beats the off-campus house at which I lived my junior and senior years of college.

In many ways, large and small, 246 N West Street, Hillsdale, Michigan, 49242 (an address I can still rattle off unthinkingly) was the fount of my college experience. Obviously, it was the place where I did most of my sleeping, a good chunk of my homework and eating, and lived other quotidian aspects of my life. But far more meaningful than all of these was the social atmosphere of the house. Both years I lived there, my cohabitants were some of my best college friends, the people with whom I generated some of my most cherished college memories. Along with other affiliated hangers-on, we enjoyed and entertained ourselves and each other in ways that would be practically impossible to communicate to someone who did not. Even to begin listing some of the glories that emerged from our household--the Gadfly Group, DJ Wetwood, the Pisswasser Weekend Warrior Award, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?"--suggests both their mystery to those who don't understand and the inadequacy of such a list even--indeed, especially--for those who do understand. So I shall simply resort to that convenient out for such situations, one that rings particularly true in this case: You had to be there.

It is probably for the best that I not recount all that transpired on this porch anyway

Yet for all this, my house wasn't always even the most entertaining one on our street. Two houses adjacent to us, both full of friends, also provided ample amusement on both weekdays and weekends. If you were ever bored with what was going on in one, odds are you could go into another, and those inside would welcome you into whatever they were doing. And, on the other hand, if you were ever too exhausted by the silliness happening in one, odds are at least one of the other ones would also contain a few slumped-over souls seeking solace from the shenanigans. In the fall and spring, we would often populate our essentially-shared front yard with couches, former dentistry chairs (God only knows from where), and other various seats, and get a fire and some music going; in the interminable Michigan winters, we would venture out into snow drifts just to travel along the paths shoveled between our houses to see what the other guys were up to; and at all times, we did our best to enjoy that rare moment in our lives when we had more of the privileges of adulthood than the responsibilities.

The houses themselves were also perfectly adequate. They were hardly fancy, but they were perfect for a bunch of young adult males who, like many members of our demographic cohort, had a tendency to live filthily, to get physical, and to break things. Oh, and did I mention that these off-campus houses were actually so close to Hillsdale's main campus buildings that you could roll out of bed and be in class on time in five minutes or less (as I proved on my many occasions)? Nor should I neglect Bob Johnston, our incredibly accommodating, miraculously tolerant, super-helpful landlord who didn't mind us at all. In fact, he encouraged us by making our lives on West Street possible. In many cases, he was the one who shoveled those paths between our houses in the winter, so conscious was he of the friendship between our houses. At the same time, however, he was not a nostalgic who wanted to live vicariously through a group of young people. We barely saw him except when there was some dire issue or when he was performing routine maintenance. And we were pretty sure he deliberately did that maintenance around 3 pm on weekdays, when our houses, most of whose residents were on the track or other sports teams, were absent. He just wanted us to have fun. Well, Bob, we had fun, and the rent was cheap.

As I wrote on Hillsdale's Class of 2015's "Senior Square"

Thanks to Bob, to our friendships, and to the experiences we generated, the houses on West Street generated what you might call a "long tradition of existence to ourselves and the community at large." We created a culture of fun and camaraderie, one that made us an institution both independent of campus and superior to dorm culture. We were an institution the college did not control. Through it, we had a presence on campus larger than ourselves. And through it, we belonged to yet another thing that would persist after we left. For each homecoming during our time on West Street brought years of prior alumni who had once called the houses on West Street home. We looked forward to doing the same during our own homecomings.

Alas, it was not to be. As we learned long before we left our houses for the last time, the college had bought and planned to demolish them in the summer of 2015. You could say this lent an added urgency to the time we had left on West Street until the houses were demolished, which was definitely true; we tried our best to enjoy every minute that remained of our time there, with much success, I think. But I remain bitter to this day about this decision. For not only did it deprive future generations of the opportunity to live in the houses as we did. It also deprived us of the opportunity to return to them. The destruction of the West Street houses also removed from campus the culture we once contributed, making the atmosphere of the place that much less interesting, and putting that much more of campus life under college control. And due to the cruel four-year turnover that marks high schools and colleges, soon no students on campus will have their own memories of our homes. The houses will live on only in hearsay, in testimonies of siblings and friends, and, God willing, in legend.  I owe my life to Hillsdale College, but I shall always remain bitter about the destruction of the West Street homes, if for nothing else than the profound emotions their untimely destruction forced upon me when I left my house for what I knew would be the last-ever time.



Indeed, not long after I recorded the above video, my last glimpse into the place I had come to love, my house ceased to exist.

Pictured: life's cruelty

Pictured: More cruelty

I saw both of the above pictures without being physically present for the destruction. But when I returned to Hillsdale for my first Homecoming last fall, I witnessed it for myself:

Where my house once stood

Seeing what was once my house turned into an empty field made me a feel bit like Charlton Heston:



I did have one physical memory of something I created when I returned to campus: the Senior Square, decorated annually by that year's graduating class (from which the above "We had fun, and rent was cheap" picture comes).

Yet the Senior Square is almost as cruel as the destruction of our houses. For at the end of every school year, that year's graduating class paints over the Square of the prior year's senior class to create its own. By now, then, my own Senior Square is gone as well. Thus now both my house and my attempts to immortalize have vanished, as well as much of my tangible legacy. The destruction of my college house has exacerbated, complicated, and forced upon me earlier than I expected the simultaneous, paradoxical, impossible reconciliation with and separation from my past that I seek. And, as recounted above, now more than a year separates me from any undergraduate experiences I had at Hillsdale. Yesterday, moreover, my school email account, which alumni keep for year after graduation, expired. I am a drowning man, thrashing around wildly around the flotsam and jetsam of my memories, hoping for something to cling to but finding nothing that stays above water.

Pictured: the end of an era

And yet my past is not dead. It isn't even passed. Nor need it be for me to feel content in life. For though I have spent much of the past year haunted by the nearness of my recent college memories, I don't have to let them haunt me, or define me. Yet neither must I jettison them entirely into oblivion to be happy. As I move into this next chapter of my life--the only one-year anniversaries that await me now relate to my time in D.C.--I can cherish the memories of my past, embrace them, and bring them into my being; the college can destroy my house, but it can't destroy my remembrances. I have become a part of all that I have met, as Ulysses states in Tennyson's poem. I don't have to dwell on my past to remember it, to honor it. I bear the imprint of all those I have met and all that I have done on my very being, and I bring it forward to wherever life brings me next. Here's hoping the next year of my life brings me as much to recall fondly as has the year that has now just passed.