Make nostalgia count

I was walking around campus at the beginning of this week, trying to come up with a deep philosophical premise for this column, when I was stopped in my tracks by what might be one of the saddest sights on Columbia’s campus. Yes, the bleachers are being assembled, bringing with them the unmistakable scent of graduation. I’ve been trying to carry on with business as usual, going about my daily activities as if it were still the beginning of the semester, and maybe you have too. But it’s time to face the truth: We can’t hide from the end of the year anymore. It’s coming for us.

My first reaction to the end of the year is usually denial or disbelief. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was studying for midterms? But once I finally realized that I can’t stop time and that, like it or not, Columbia will kick us out in a little less than three weeks, I started to become nostalgic. There’s an almost universal impulse, when endings roll around, to look back on what’s happened to us during that time and try to make some sense of the tangle of events, impressions, and feelings. The seniors are feeling this more than any of us, of course, but to some extent all of us are starting to get wistful about our lives here and the things that happened to us this year. Things like Spectator Senior Columns and Bwog’s Senior Wisdom feed off this impulse, although any genuine reflection—as opposed to joking around—is likely to get lambasted in the comments.

Is there any purpose to this nostalgia? Is it just one of those slightly embarrassing feelings that we all have to deal with, or should we enjoy our impulse to look back and actually take the time to reflect on our years here? There’s a lot of unfortunate and cheesy stuff associated with endings, from the sentimental “you can achieve all your dreams” speeches of graduations to the overly effusive end-of-year goodbyes from acquaintances you barely know. I think it’s this stuff that makes us sometimes want to push nostalgia away or avoid our wistful impulses. On the one hand, it’s pretty reasonable. The more mawkish side of endings makes us uncomfortable partially because we’ve all been through endings before, and we know that in many cases they’re not as big a deal as we make them out to be. Life goes on after Columbia ends, even if you’re like me and have absolutely zero summer plans. Our feelings can get out of hand, and we don’t want reminiscing to get in the way of enjoying the time we have left here (or finishing our work, for that matter). In addition, the sentimentality of the end of the year can leave us feeling left out if our year hasn’t been worth celebrating. It’s tough to reflect on difficulties experienced and bad decisions made if everyone around us is gushing about how great this year was.

However, I believe that we can harness all this sentiment to our purposes and take a good, hard look at what actually happened to us this year, as well as how we feel about it. The end of a year may not be the end of the world, but it is an opportunity for us to take stock of where this year has taken us. I’m always amazed by the sheer amount that happens during a college year; I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us grew and changed as much in eight months here as we would in five years in the real world. If we just let all of it happen to us, never taking a moment to think about it and distill it to what was useful or enjoyable, then we’ll lose most of it—the events of 2010-2011 turning into a random catalog of impressions that will eventually fade. This is particularly true for those of us who are returning next year. If we never take the time to consider this year for what it was, 2011-2012 will soon superimpose itself over our memories of this year, and we may find ourselves experiencing the same things next year that we’d hoped to avoid or doing the things we swore we’d never do again. So let’s reflect, examine, recollect, and file away this year, without undue effusiveness, but with honesty and a sense of fondness for anything good this year has given us.

Kathryn Brill is a Barnard College sophomore majoring in English. She is a member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. We Should Talk runs alternate Fridays.