But the most common sentiments I find (among the Class of '94, anyway) are regret, doubt and the overwhelming desire to "get out of this place" which we once had such an overwhelming desire to get into. The spirit that gripped us during Freshman Week 1990 seems as good as dead.
Nearly four years have passed since 1 climbed the Widener steps and surveyed the Yard as Napoleon might have surveyed Austerlitz, or Waterloo Today, it's embarrassing--but a sweet embarrassment--to recall that former me.
For all his puffed-up self-importance, that recently dethroned king of Podunk High had a light inside of him, which encouraged him to be bold, to think big, to take chances and to win.
Maybe I should climb those floodlit Widener steps again. Not in order to look backward or recapture what was, but to look forward and conceive of what still can be.
Regression? Perhaps. But next time I climb those steps, I promise I won't climb them alone.
Jacques E. C. Hymans '94 will attend the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences as a Ph. D. candidate in government, starting in the fall.