I spent my summer wandering Europe. This was mostly a very good thing. Some guy tried to pickpocket me in London (either that, or he was attempting to feel me up), but the pocket was empty. In Lyon, I stayed in a room roughly the size and temperature of a classroom pottery kiln. I laid on a beach on the Italian Riviera. I was driven three hours so I could look at the central square of Pienza for ten minutes, which was odd. I got embroiled in a two week long duel over the best seat in a van with a 35-year-old dude who outweighed me by 40 pounds. I had tea at the Ritz. I saw "Superman Returns" on the Champs-Elysees. I had one of the best meals of my life on a Trastevere sidestreet in Rome, and it only cost me 12 Euro. I made sandwiches crouched on a Dublin street corner, swigging water out of a three-liter bottle. I saw "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the Abbey Theater.
These things were good and wonderful and exciting, and everywhere I went my hair was blown backwards by the speed of my travel and the glory of the wide world. But the thing was, no matter where I went, the University threw out its vast arms to draw me back home. I spent an afternoon at a Swiss boarding school and was shocked to discover four fellow Wahoos working there. In London, I climbed 331 steps to reach the top of the Monument, the world's tallest free-standing pillar -- and, when I reached the platform, I collided with a high school junior wearing exclusively orange-and-blue V-saber clothing. I walked into a sandwich shop in London and found myself looking straight at one of my best friends at the University, whom I thought was in North Carolina. I wandered the Left Bank in Paris and discovered a huge statue of Jefferson which had been unveiled only three weeks before.
It was like the little world of Grounds followed me this summer wherever I went. And that's great -- I love the University enough to want never to leave it, so having these shadowy and distant reminders at my side was a great comfort in the dreadful heat of the Roman nights. But even though everywhere I went the University came too, that didn't make this recent homecoming any less magnificent.
The first days of the year are always so good. They grab you by your throat and whirl you off through the waltzing crowd, and next thing you know, you're picking yourself up bruised and exhilarated and it's late autumn and the leaves are already turned.
These first days have been particularly good, though, because now that I'm a third-year at our University, I feel as if my citizenship has finally become valid. I have a history here now, not just a life. I was sitting in my friend's room on the Lawn a few days ago in the late afternoon watching baseball and hearing the confused mutters of first-years from the green space outside, and it occurred to me how many times before I had done this same thing, and how many times left there were to do it again. It was great.
And so we have reinvented ourselves once again, those now-ancient alums gone into the dustbin of history and my new first-year friends wild with the delight of the nights and ferocious with their youth and their thinness and the incredible potential of four unexplored years. I wouldn't trade with them, though, envious as I am of the time they have ahead of them. I am, for example, glad that I no longer ask questions like, "Hey, dude, can you help me find this frat party? I was told that it was in a big brick house with columns." I'm glad to have a history, old as I feel when I see the hordes moving in slow gigantic packs down to Rugby Rd. every night. I'm glad that this place follows me now, instead of me trying to find a path to follow. I'm glad that we're all ready for another immense and far-horizoned and intoxicating year. Welcome, my new friends, and welcome back to all the rest of you. Let's go.
Connor's column runs bi-weekly on Thursdays. He can be reached at sullivan@cavalierdaily.com.
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