St Francis College - Franciscan Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

Page 18 text:

Ahh yes! Those words again. Ex¬ perience. The proverbial rainbow! Wisdom. The pot of gold at the rain¬ bow’s end! Usually reserved for the end of the school year, these words make one wonder about his own liv¬ ing habits. “Indeed, what will become of me” you think to yourself. “Is my experience a fruitful one? Will I be wise? Or at least get along?” The desire to live within the framework of profitable experience is one shared by all of us. We need not worry too much about the place that these years will hold for us in the future. Undoubtedly, these are significant times. A British author, R. J. Johnston once wrote of a man whom he called Smith and who he met when he, Johnston was middle- aged. He wrote the following of this man: “Even if I never saw Smith again, I could never forget him — for I could never tell the story of myself without speaking of him . . .When I met him I was a fully grown man — never suspecting that any real changes would occur in my life. But after I came to know him I realized life for me would never be the same again.” One can assume safely that St. Francis College will bear that same relationship to one’s life that Smith did to Johnston’s life. At least in the sense that it affected in one way or another your outlook on things out¬ side. Moreover, the contact that one makes — the human contact, can be very much like the contact spoken of in the passage above. The unforget¬ table people. Teachers. Students. Office workers. Cafeteria workers. Laughing. Crying. Living. Loving. Making Hay. In a million years you couldn’t run into a group of people like these. What’s more, you find yourself talking about them or to them. Being for them. And you realize that in the future in thinking about 1974 — 1975, you will remember these people. You will have to if you are to accurately show who you are or who you were. The growth is not simply a matter of appearance; it’s real. 16