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Do I have Gray Hairs Yet?
Published on 27/08/06
by John Phillips
For the past few days (prior to Saturday) I had been looking forward to making my return to East Lansing for the day for a business meeting and to chill with the homies. I can’t lie, parts of me definitely miss the atmosphere there, but I still like where I am now. It felt real weird being back there, for one because I hadn’t been there in awhile, and two, cause it was one of the first times that I really realized that East Lansing wasn’t home anymore like it had been for the previous 6 years of my life.
So I’m seeing all of these students that look like they’re all 15. It made me feel so old, and nothing about the age of 23 sounds old. It’s even more weird that I don’t really know anyone in East Lansing anymore. There’s Double O, Paulie, Miller, Andrew, and Tyler. That’s it. I feel like I know and still talk to just as many old professors as I do my friends.
Welcome Week hasn’t changed at all either. Not that I expected it to, but there were just tons of people out, it was ridiculous. You’d think that it would be nothing to me, since I’ve done the welcome week thing quite a bit, but it’s not everyday that you see thousands of college students out partying. And the freshman are the easiest to recongnize because they will be the ones in packs of 20+, and they’re extremely sober because obviously they are way under age.
One thing that I just kind of thought of, is if you think back to your college years, and all that we went through and dealt with, and every last bit of fun that we had. Just think about that for like two seconds. And then think about all of these incoming freshman that have no idea what they are about to go through. They have no clue about all of the life changing events that are going to happen, whether it be meeting friends for life, meeting your future spouse, that opportunity to make it big, etc.
That kind of bugs me out a little bit because we (alums) were all in position once, and personally, I didn’t know anything. I was naive to sooo much. So it’s interesting being able to briefly recap my college years and then look at the new jacks coming into the school and to think “Wow, life is about to get real damn interesting”. This is definitely one of those times where you can easily look from the outside-in because we’ve been there done that.
Even though it made me feel old looking at the youngsters, at the same time, it makes me damn proud that I was able to spend some of the best years of my life (thus far) as a Spartan. I am one proud ass alumni!
peace