Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

Page 24 text:

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The morning comes to consciousness of faint stale smells of beer-and the traumatic blast of the nine o'clock horn. Your stomach returns the call in the exotic idiom of an inebriate Primate, and you drowse .... The quaint chimes of the library clock lilt out the tune My-dog-has-wfleas, and your en- raptured brain throbs in return a melodious just-go-to-h ..., and you hitch up the sheet and drowse .... The alarm clock tinkles merrily, and your quaking hand fumbles after it like a hungry elephant after a peanut. The birds outside twitter with abandon. YVhat are they so damn happy about?,' a sort of familiar voice asks. XVhere's the aspirin? XVho am IP YVhat's today, Sunday? Sunday. Then last night was Saturday night? That's right, Satur- day. The party? The party. Ho boy, what a blast!

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Swarthmore has been called a number of things. It has been called The Kremlin on the Crum, the Citadel of Individualism, A Seething Hotbed of Quakerism, The Home of the Honors System, An Un- healthy Place, The Finest College in the Country, A Monkey Studiously Examining Itself for Fleas, Hell. It has been called all of these things and more. But if four years at Swarthmore has taught us nothing else, it has at least taught us that no well-set phrase- indeed, no number of well-set phrases-can pin down Swarthmore. Because now it is, for better or for worse, a part of us, a part of our lives, indeed-if you will--a part of our souls. And what could be more persistently unnamable than that? XVhen we leave Swarthmore-when we catch that last glimpse of Magill, with Parrish squatting on the hill in all her haughty, ugly magnificence and the Libe, sullenly brooding over his tomes-we may leave in any number of ways. YVe may leave with a degree andfor an education andfor a spouse. XVe may leave disillusioned, pious, enlightened, pessimistic, opti- mistic. But there is one way in which it is impossible to leave Swarthmore. It is impossible to leave it naive- ly. It is impossible to leave it with the intent-or even the ability-to consistently kid or coddle ourselves. Out of our disparate terrains we came to work out the ideas and experiences together. YVe worked them out as best we could, and in the process, whether we like it or not, we have made them as much a part of us as we are of them. And if now Swarthmore is a place of goodbyes, whereas once it was a place of hello's, if now we have to go back to our separate lives, we're going to have a hard time ignoring this place. Because it's too vivid to forget and too good to want to. But who knows? Maybe the best is yet to come, maybe.