By Rosie Dillon
There was a time not so long ago when I would sit down to write a Bi-Co article, excited to make my voice heard. I liked to take an idea and fashion it into what I hoped would be a convincing and witty argument. Regardless of whether anyone else read it, it made me happy and proud. Now I find myself uninspired, unmotivated, and generally unwilling to compose articles like the ones I once loved.
To make the problem worse, I am an editor for this section and can only hide from myself for so long. The time always comes when I take a good hard look in the mirror and realize that we can’t print an opinion section with only two articles. Inspired or not, I must drag my weary cursor to the Word icon, and click. Yes, things have changed, and I’m left asking, what do I have, and is there something I can take for it?
My lack of inspiration isn’t exactly a lack of ideas. The ideas I have are just different these days. They’re things like: I Thought College Would Last Forever, But I was Dead Wrong; Getting Drunk Ceases to be Fun on Your Twenty-First Birthday; and Why Did I Major in Religion if I Didn’t Want to Become a Cleric? These are the sorts of things that we seniors think about, but not the kind of thing others want to hear about.
In addition to still having ideas, I still know how to think, and write, and I still occasionally say things that I think are funny. The problem isn’t that anything is really wrong with me; I haven’t even gotten a flu shot, so I’ve no one to blame for my neurological condition. The problem has more to do with being on the doorstep of the real world and having trouble taking the issues of the bi-co community seriously enough to write articles about them. When I try to philosophize about bi-co controversies, my mind soon wanders to May and Commencement, and suddenly I’m frantically reading back-issues of the CDO Compass and wondering what kind of benefits package Whole Foods offers.
I’m clearly not the only senior suffering from a serious case of the seriousies. My friends have all taken a long wistful look at the communal futon, broken by almost three and a half years of use, before walking away, calling out that it’s only swine flu making their eyes water. After three years of being happy and free, we have realized that we will soon be confronted with a sobering choice: become a working person, or become a street person.
Yes, we 2010ers moved into Lloyd and lost the ability to take seriously the unserious. This newfound seriousness isn’t a choice, but a situational necessity. It isn’t older and wiser, but older and more panicked. The wiser thing is to realize that no one ever said life had to be so serious; life is short; not to sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff; and other such bumper stickers. Thus, I don’t plan to stay this way. When I have the life-security to be silly again, I will strap on my clown nose and get writing.
Dillon, a senior religion major, can be reached at rdillon@haverford.edu.
This article is © 2008 The Bi-College News. The material on this page is free for personal or educational use, but may not be reproduced, reprinted, republished, redistributed, or otherwise transmitted to a third party without the express written permission of The Bi-College News, 370 Lancaster Ave, Haverford, PA 19041.
Editor's note: Articles that appear in the Last Word section are works of satire.
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