Bitterness of an (almost) senior

I’m starting to get old. I’m not the spry, happy-go-lucky first year I once was. Well, perhaps calling myself ‘spry’ is a bit of revisionist history, but the fact remains that I am now an old and cynical (almost) senior. I am all too painfully reminded of this fact each time I or my friends get turned away from positions on campus in favor of younger students. We are seriously old.

Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating. I mean, I am only 21. I’ve got a few years yet before I have to start worrying about wrinkles, gray hair, and mysterious aches and pains that are not due to wacky drunken misadventures. But if we start talking about life in terms of time at Grinnell, I’m getting damn near close to being able to collect Social Security. I may even have to spend next spring sitting out on my loggia in a lawn chair, wearing black socks and Bermuda shorts and cursing at the young ‘uns to keep the volume down and stop throwing those campus bikes around. Damn kids never appreciate what they’re given. Anyway, you get my point. I fear the inevitable marginalization that comes from the ticking clock of seniordom. The administration knows that we’re getting jaded and antsy, so they’re trying to shuffle us out of the spotlight, especially when it comes to the all-important sphere of prospie relations.

I learned this year that the admissions office has an unofficial policy of trying as hard as possible to house prospies with first and second-year students. At first, I wondered if they did this because they know that upperclassmen tend to have a lot more work, and they don’t want prospies to know that Grinnell is the overwhelming stress factory that it is. However, the older I get, the more I begin to realize that this policy exists because upperclassmen are cynical bastards. Or, at least, I am.

Back when I was a first-year, and even when I was a second-year, the idea of hosting a prospie was really exciting because it was an opportunity to show the college off to someone who had a very real possibility of becoming a friend to me in the future. I didn’t give much thought to those who would have to leave before these prospies actually got to come to Grinnell. These days, I’m starting to feel actively threatened by these high school students who are here, essentially, to interview as replacements for our beloved senior class. I’m even more threatened by those who are interviewing to replace my own class. More than once, I have engaged in a half-assed introductory conversation with a prospy, only to find out that they intend to apply for the class of 2012, and I lose all interest in them. If you’re not going to be here until after I graduate, you are irrelevant to me. Any interest I do retain at that point is not so much based on a desire to encourage the prospy to come to Grinnell as it is on a desire to see something that is personally amusing to me. For example, few things amuse me as much as the face of a 17-year-old right after having been told about how certain colorful campus characters sometimes get wasted and piss in other people’s dorm rooms on accident.

I’m not a mean person, though. Really. The psychology major in me keeps telling me that all I’m doing is using antagonistic humor to project my fears of graduation and the real world onto some poor innocent high school students. And I know that I’ll eventually hit the point at which I will be able to accept that the end is coming, and start to consider the fact that Grinnell does still have to go on without me, and that it’s not my responsibility to make sure that it continues its legacy of awesomeness.

But, I’ve still got at least a good six months to be pissy and elitist about how everything was so much better back when we still used the Forum. And rest assured, Asia Sample, that I will continue to reminisce about the Forum until the day I die, and I encourage all members of the classes of 2007, 2008 and 2009 to do the same.