Seek out campus traditions
Joel Pavelski
Issue date: 9/24/09 Section: Opinion
The new school year began for me without a few people that defined the old school year, leading me to question the regular rituals that my departed senior friends had quietly convinced me to share. Call them habits, like spending every Wednesday locked in the Collegian office, or traditions, like boisterously singing Irish drinking songs on weekends.
I expected these conventions to seem hollow without their creators. Instead, these traditions keep me sane. They fill me with the warmth of shared history. Without them, I'd be wandering, repeating the lost feeling of freshman year.
Sans tradition, our entire school would appear as an icy indifferent island-a world without context. Luckily, we're inundated with optional ways to avoid that sort of world. Just musing about tradition is a tradition here. The word itself hides within the lingo we frequently use, within synonyms like "heritage," "legacy," or "inheritance."
Our heritage is upheld best by our traditions, because traditions are built and supported in the small silent moments of our every day-when holding open a door, reading a poem in memory of a departed friend, attending a Galloway feast, or passing off the last drag of a cigarette. To participate in a campus habit is to insert yourself into its past.
Tradition provides meaning and context, an invisible encyclopedia of unspoken local history. It helps fit you into a more deeply felt security. It enforces your place in a community, and reminds you of the responsibilities that your role demands.
W. Somerset Maugham said that tradition is a guide and not a jailer, and he was right. Tradition is your unofficial guidebook to campus, but the pages of this guidebook will be found walking to class with you and not on a shelf in the library.
If you are new or have yet to find your own little campus set, keep your eyes open and your head up. Search out the social traditions here. They encircle and intertwine us. Explore Greek life, or hunt down students who will avoid it with you. Don't be afraid to create your own conventions-some of my freshman friends have already done so, instituting their own weekly "Manly Movie Monday."
This isn't to say that you should form or join a clique, but that you should allow yourself to be really, truly, present. Impress yourself indelibly on this plot of land, as it impresses itself on you. Tradition has bound me here, and it will bind you, if you let it.
According to T. S. Eliot, only by accepting the past can you alter it. Altering our environment and ourselves is what we are here to do.
I expected these conventions to seem hollow without their creators. Instead, these traditions keep me sane. They fill me with the warmth of shared history. Without them, I'd be wandering, repeating the lost feeling of freshman year.
Sans tradition, our entire school would appear as an icy indifferent island-a world without context. Luckily, we're inundated with optional ways to avoid that sort of world. Just musing about tradition is a tradition here. The word itself hides within the lingo we frequently use, within synonyms like "heritage," "legacy," or "inheritance."
Our heritage is upheld best by our traditions, because traditions are built and supported in the small silent moments of our every day-when holding open a door, reading a poem in memory of a departed friend, attending a Galloway feast, or passing off the last drag of a cigarette. To participate in a campus habit is to insert yourself into its past.
Tradition provides meaning and context, an invisible encyclopedia of unspoken local history. It helps fit you into a more deeply felt security. It enforces your place in a community, and reminds you of the responsibilities that your role demands.
W. Somerset Maugham said that tradition is a guide and not a jailer, and he was right. Tradition is your unofficial guidebook to campus, but the pages of this guidebook will be found walking to class with you and not on a shelf in the library.
If you are new or have yet to find your own little campus set, keep your eyes open and your head up. Search out the social traditions here. They encircle and intertwine us. Explore Greek life, or hunt down students who will avoid it with you. Don't be afraid to create your own conventions-some of my freshman friends have already done so, instituting their own weekly "Manly Movie Monday."
This isn't to say that you should form or join a clique, but that you should allow yourself to be really, truly, present. Impress yourself indelibly on this plot of land, as it impresses itself on you. Tradition has bound me here, and it will bind you, if you let it.
According to T. S. Eliot, only by accepting the past can you alter it. Altering our environment and ourselves is what we are here to do.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Red L.
Red L
posted 9/26/09 @ 5:01 PM EST
What a lovely article, its spot-on.
Joy Pavelski
posted 9/28/09 @ 12:49 PM EST
I hope your Eliot reference is to 'Tradition and the Individual Talent.' If so, kudos. You've earned a bit of respect. If not, read that essay. (You know, in two years when you can finally sleep again. (Continued…)
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