Bittersweet doesn’t begin to define what seniors are already experiencing
Fletcher Magee. Wendi Nix. Craig Melvin. William McGirt. Jerry Richardson.
If you’re reading this as a student, in a matter of a few years—or, for my classmates, approximately eight months—your name will join this cohort of Wofford College graduates. In due time, pomp and circumstance, as well as tug-of-war-esque emotions, will accompany graduation. The precursors of these emotions look something like my classmates and I frantically reaching for a non-existent emergency brake of college life, like throwing a Hail Mary from the opposite end zone. Needless to say, gr******** is a sensitive topic.
But whether the word ‘graduation’ elicits memories of your high school graduation a matter of months ago, or the commencement ceremony that will occur—per tradition—on the lawn of Old Main in eight months, it’s crucial to consider how we spend each day parading around Wofford’s campus.
As a first-year student, I wish I had wasted less time wading in a pool of hesitancy. Sure, I attended the Interest Fair—a literal A-Z showcase boasting all of the clubs and activities that compose Wofford’s student body, each of which hoped to rein freshmen in with Krispy Kreme doughnuts and plastered-on smiles—where I diligently collected all of the pamphlets and swag and repeatedly scribbled my name and new wofford.edu email address on sign-up sheets. Yet when it came to establishing intimate friendships, I was uncharacteristically passive. I was waiting for my best friends to fall into my lap, or onto my futon in first floor Greene, without putting much effort into the process myself. As I became more accustomed to my new setting, and to my hallmates and classmates, I became more comfortable stepping through open door frames to introduce myself. As a result, friendships evolved from obscure beginnings. My friend Hailey—who lived down the hall from me on first floor Greene—and I still joke about how she forced our friendship…
Three years passed by extremely quickly and I soon found myself moving into my apartment in the Senior Village, surrounded by all of my best friends. Imagine living in semi-post-grad living conditions—aka having a kitchen and kitchen table—but still being able to watch your best friends walk across the lawn, to and from their apartments, from the rocking chairs on your porch. Whereas freshman year move-in was a whirlwind, with directions and heavy-lifting orchestrated by the Orientation Staff, senior move-in consisted of pulling my car up to the front of my new apartment and calling over to my friends across the lawn to help me unload. This made for a quick job and a heart already brimming with happiness knowing how content I am with the people whose hearts, quips, mannerisms and quirks have become constant, but not commonplace, in my life.
I fear that the porches of our apartments, as well as the beach volleyball court behind apartment 360—which is comprised entirely of friends of mine—will be the demise of my GPA. There are worse things.
Until May rolls around, which it inevitably will, I’ll continue to spend this time chatting and laughing over group dinners, over extensive porch-sits, over morning coffee with new friends, during the ‘hike’ to class from Phase III, in stairwells of apartments and academic buildings and everywhere in between. We’ll talk about studying for the GRE, MCAT or DAT, about applying for post-grad jobs, about tackling the last of our upper-level courses and ensuring we satisfy our graduation requirements and about *cringe* savoring our last two semesters spent within 500 square feet of each other.
If the walls of Wofford—of Old Main, the library, Burwell, dorms and apartments, Milliken, Campus Life, MSBVC, Olin, the Ros, Montgomery Music Building—could talk, I’d hope that, in the years to come, they’d tell future Wofford students stories: stories of students who were engaged in their relationships as much as they were their studies, of students who drove to Florida to watch the underdog—or Terrier, rather—play in March Madness, of students who studied and interned across the nation and globe and, primarily, of students who spent every minute of their time loving the place they were in.
