At the end of every week, I take the delicate (but necessary) responsibility of rounding up the major events and finding a common theme or lesson among them. But this time, instead of using sarcastic and grouchy quips to make sense of a week of life at Northwestern, I’m forced to contemplate the conclusion of an entire year. It’s a big task: How can I adequately decide what the year meant? With knock-knock jokes? It just doesn’t seem right.
One way in which to “review” the year came to me about a week ago, as I helped my friend move out of our dorm (he was “asked” to vacate the building. Let’s just say he wasn’t a CA’s dream as far as well-behaved residents go). Sorting through the accumulated piles of junk in his room, my friend held up each object he found and asked me, “What should I do with this?” Each time, it led to a question, story, or joke. “What was I thinking?” he said to a pink scrunchy. “What a waste of money,” he said, scowling at a Lifehouse ticket stub. Some lucky mementos, like a Dance Marathon t-shirt (how do you throw away a shirt you toiled for 30 hours for?) and a “Sex Six Pack” of condoms from Sex Week (probably with practical intentions) were tucked away to be kept, at least for now. Others, like so many LaRouche manifestos and a chipped shot-glass formal favor, never made it further than the hallway trash can.
The act of moving was forcing my friend to physically review the entire year. My suggestion, Northwestern, is to do just that. Instead of reading this column to round out your week, take the opportunity to make the process of moving into a process of reflection to round out your year. To guide your packing, here’s a list of possible mementos you may find in your dorm’s nooks and crannies.
- Flavored lube samples from Sex Week.
- The folder of welcome items and the hospital release form from New Student Week.
- Those e-mails you sent to Dean Lavine which you DID save.
- The towel that Girl Talk threw from the stage.
- The Little Black Recruitment Book from sorority rush… or the ashes of it, anyway.
- Your first fake — the one that says that you’re 17.
- Enough ASG campaign quarter-sheets to stuff your pillow. In fact, they did fill your pillow.
- A Burger King crown or four.
- The three cans of mace and the rape whistle your mom sent you after the “crime surge.”
- Your (still) empty DM can.
- A picture of your high-school soulmate whom you swore you’d be with forever… underneath some other guy’s boxer briefs.
- A Lambda Phi Epsilon ex-pledge cowering in your closet.
- Your thick down parka from winter quarter. Oh wait, that’s on your back.
Now, as you encounter these things, it’s up to you to decide what you’ll toss and what you want to remember of this year, one-quarter of the supposed best years of your life. Even though my friend tossed out more things than he kept, each of the items now lying at the bottom of the third-floor Hinman-Lincoln hall garbage can had at least received a fair chance before being hauled away forever. And every object upon that landed a prized spot in a duffel bag really deserved to be there.
After he was all packed up and out the door, I couldn’t wait to start moving myself. I had been searching for a thorough way to wrap up my year, and I had finally found it. Although I know that the garbage cans will be overflowing once the rest of us start packing, I’ll be glad that every memory left in my room will have been “reviewed.”