I’ll save the sappy stuff for next week. In next week’s issue of The Maroon-News, which will be the last of the academic year and of my Colgate career, I will have the opportunity to spill my beans in a senior reflection piece which promises, if anything, to be a bit corny. It also promises to take a look back at my past four years here and my future. But, for now, let’s talk about the present.

As I am typing this, eight softball teams of about ten people each are outside on Whitnall Field participating in four games. Certainly, there are several others lying outside on the various quads up the hill with a book or a magazine, simply enjoying the weather and their surroundings. On Broad Street, I can see a few folks enjoying some music and food on their lawns. And, sadly, there are probably many more students, who, like me, are in front of a computer screen right now.

Do you remember the first time you saw Colgate? I do. I drove up on a sunny June day the summer before my senior year of high school and nearly lost my breath when I saw the lake and rolling greens. “This,” I thought to myself “is what a college campus should look like.” I pictured days outside playing softball and enjoying the scenery. I never once thought about being knee-deep in books or being anywhere indoors for that matter. For some reason, the academic aspect of college never crossed my mind. You don’t need me to tell you that the scenery is not always like it was on that summer day at Colgate. After another dreadful winter, we are in the middle of the only time of year when you can truly enjoy the Colgate that I first saw on that summer day.

Before I had to worry about seminar papers and 400-level exams, I too was a first-year student. Some of my best memories from that year include those days in April when we fielded a softball team and smacked the ball around. Or, when a group of three of us went down to the creek and proceeded to load up a SuperSoaker with creek water and sprayed the women’s rugby team in the middle of their practice. And Friday afternoon meant Happy Hour on the front porch of a now-defunct fraternity. To me, after months of snow, I was finally enjoying the Colgate I had envisioned. It was what I had thought college life was like.

So, I urge you – while it’s nice outside and while Colgate actually looks like it does in the brochures – to get outside with a baseball glove or a football and enjoy the scenery. The work can wait. That’s what finals week is for. No newspaper that week, by the way.