CORRECTION APPENDED

Everyone has heard it before. From parents, relatives, maybe an older sibling: “College will be the best four years of your life.” Although always uttered with a note of pleasant nostalgia, it’s downright depressing for all of us about to graduate. Are we cruising downhill for the next 60 or 70 years?

That just doesn’t seem fair. It’s not like the life of a Harvard undergraduate is without its pressures. Once we beat the odds and get in, there is still the pressure to fit in with our classmates, the pressure to pick a concentration, and even the pressure to make our mark on the John Harvard statue. Some of us are faced with the pressure of getting into a final club, making that team, dating that girl or guy in section, whatever it may be. And our classes. Them too. This is the environment that is supposed to be the best four years of our lives?

For the average Harvard student, it becomes a challenge to pack a tremendous amount of enjoyment into senior year, and particularly into senior spring. Perhaps this why we have senior bar and the Last Senior Standing competition, a final warning shot telling everyone to leave the libraries and hit the bars before our ever-narrowing social window shuts behind us.

As we approach graduation, I can’t help but feel that each minute has to be fun. No matter what I had to do the next day for class, I made it to Senior Bar. If I had a test or a problem set, I went anyway. Part of the reason was because I knew that I would never have that chance again. To borrow a phrase that Jess R. Burkle ’06  coined in his Class Day speech last year, I can’t help but feel that, on June 7th, the sound of Bill Gates' voice will represent “the sound of the train of fun coming to a halt.” We won’t be able to slip-and-slide on the Quad, play paintball on a Tuesday, or visit a brewery in the middle of the week. Unless you want be that kid that keeps coming back after graduation to pretend as though it never ended, the lifestyle of a college student becomes instantly harder to justify after June 7. Not impossible—but it will soon fall under the general heading of alcoholism. [SEE CORRECTION]

But maybe it’s not that bad. As much as having fun has become a perverted source of stress, it has also been a blessing in disguise. I’ve learned something over the past semester. It gets better. All of the people we’ve met here at Harvard, whether it was drunk at senior bar, in a slightly more comprising way at the Last Chance Dance, or even on move-in day of freshman year, have improved our lives, the total benefit of which we won’t comprehend until many years down the road.

The relationships we’ve created here have only just begun. Even the best of friends made at Harvard have only had four years to get to know each other. And although distance will widen, these friends, these relationships now have decades instead of semesters to grow. We have an opportunity to shape how our years at Harvard affect the rest of our lives, socially, personally, and professionally. We can make this time even more valuable by maintaining the relationships we’ve made here and taking to heart all of the lessons we have learned, most of which have not been in the classroom.

It’s not over. It doesn’t have to be. Time is on our side and the best is yet to come. And, just in case, the Harvard-Yale game is less than six months away. I’ll see you there. I’ll be the one on top of the U-Haul.

Matthew R. Conroy ’07, a Crimson photography editor, is an economics concentrator in Cabot House.

CORRECTION

The June 4 parting shot "The Best Four Years of Your Life?" incorrectly named last year's Class Day speaker as "Jess Buss '06." His correct name is Jess R. Burkle '06. The Crimson regrets this error.