The Tripod

Issue date: 11/3/09 Section: Opinions

Late August 2006

I arrive at North Campus 124. My roommate has not yet arrived, and my father and I rearrange the room to optimize space. I take the side I want, because I was there first. My sister helps my father and me unpack my clothes, bedding, books, computer. I am all set up; they leave.

Early December 2006

I sit in the Jackson basement, in what I just learned was the Tripod office. There are dozens of unfamiliar faces around me, and I am unsure of completely why I am there. I was told there was an election and to come, but I do not think that I am eligible for anything. The newly elected Editor-in-Chief finds out I know Quark, the software they use. They need a second Sports Editor. They offer me the job. I accept, so long as I can still write for other sections.

Wednesday, Late February 2007

I return to my North Campus room in the afternoon. My roommate, who has become one of my closest friends at school, is watching television with his girlfriend. Probably "The Girls Next Door." We turn off the television and do homework in the room for three hours, with his girlfriend, who has also become one of my closest friends at school, DJing the background music. After we have exhausted our energy supply for work, we order food and start watching the first season of "Survivor," which I have on DVD. We watch the entire season that night, and go to class in the morning strangely awake.

Late Monday Night/Early Tuesday Morning, Late March 2007

I return to my North Campus room and start crying. They ask me what is wrong and I tell them I just don't know why I do the Tripod. It isn't worth it and it just makes me miserable. You're just having a bad night, they tell me. It will be all right in the morning. I go to bed. It is all right in the morning.

Mid-July 2007

I reunite with my friends from school at my roommate's house. We go bowling and drink on his porch. It is warm at night and the cold drinks are refreshing. We all moan about how we can't wait for September to come.

September 2007

I accept a bid to a fraternity. I begin pledging and drink beer for the first time. My roommate from freshman year is my roommate sophomore year, and we are pledging together. We return to our quad after a night of pledging with some of our newfound friends. We order food and play Wii. One of the others in our quad gets upset with us, says we are being too loud.

Late October 2007

My roommate has broken up with his girlfriend, who is a year older and abroad for the semester. She Skypes me late at night wanting to talk about things. I have just finished talking to him about the same things, but I talk to her anyway. I know they will get back together.

December 2007

I have been on staff at the Tripod for a year, and am convinced I am ready for a promotion. I am dissatisfied with how things have been run and think that I could do better. I do not get the promotion and I stay in my old role, unhappy more with what I assumed would be a disaster for the paper than with my own bruised ego.

April 2008

I have moved into my fraternity's house, and am busier than I remember ever having been before. I am in the middle of Sense and Sensibility and The Merchant of Venice, my Tripod duties are growing and overwhelming, and I am starting to have a say in my fraternity. I am thankful that I have my own room.

May 2008

The semester is over. I have been elected to the position I had wanted in December at the Tripod and have been elected to an officer position in my fraternity. I call my sister a little after midnight and I tell her that I am very scared and that I do not know if I am going to be able to handle the responsibilities I am facing. I tell her that I am going to miss my graduating friends, and that I don't know if I am going to be able to do all of these things without them around for support. She tells me that I was put in these positions because those people trusted me to fulfill the responsibilities.

September 2008

I moved back to campus a week ago, and have a new found confidence. I am a junior and I believe that I can handle whatever comes my way. Things are going well.

Late Monday Night /Early Tuesday Morning, November 2008

I return to my room and start crying. My roommate is back with his girlfriend. They ask me what is wrong and I tell them I just don't know why I do the Tripod. It isn't worth it and it just makes me miserable. You're just having a bad night, they tell me. It will be all right in the morning. I go to bed. It is all right in the morning.

December 2008

I am elected Editor-in-Chief in an uncontested election. I feel fulfilled, as if I actually had been working towards something for the past four semesters, and had not simply fallen into place, though I know the latter is mostly true. I did not have that kind of foresight when I was an underclassman.

February 2009

The second semester of my junior year has started; I am Editor-in-Chief of the Tripod, in all upper-level courses in my major, and am vice-president of my fraternity. A good deal of my friends are abroad for the semester, and I fill the gaps in my life left by their absence with work and commitments.

The story goes on. When thinking about your time here at Trinity (something I wish I did less, but in the face of an all-too-fast-approaching graduation, find hard to avoid) you remember certain things. When we attempt to tell a certain narrative, like why you joined a Greek organization, how you became the head of an organization, or how you became friends with the people you hold most dear, you have a massive bank of source material to pick and choose from.

So, say you lay it all out on a table. Not necessarily in chronological order, but everything out there. You're trying to write an Opinions article on student involvement on campus, or lack thereof. You look back at your stack of memories and experiences, and you pick and choose those that you want to use to illustrate whatever point it is you have. You are, however, aware that removing any of these events would somehow change all that followed.

Joan Didion writes in her essay "The White Album": "We tell ourselves stories in order to live … We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience." Is this not true as well of a liberal arts education? We are free to explore, free to take classes in different disciplines and of different styles. And, like piecing together the narrative bits of our lives, it is the discovery, after four years, of what our education has actually been about.

Above I simply put together a list of moments that immediately came to mind when thinking about my time at Trinity and my time at the Tripod, my fraternity, and my friends, the three things that dominate my non-academic life. It fits together the same way that my education does upon retrospect. I look at my friends and the narrative of where they come in and out of my life becomes clear. Friends from the Tripod become friends solely, arguments arise when the lines become blurred, but we are brought back together by that which brought us together in the first place. Some things, it turn out, are patterned and cyclical. Some - maybe most - events that you think of won't fit into most of the narratives you try to tell. But only by examining the lot and reflecting back on what has transpired will you be able to see those threads that tie your person together and those that are truly important to you.

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