One evening last week a friend and I rode bikes among a scattering of parents and newly-arrived students wandering campus pathways a few days before fall semester started. The sun had just set and the lights were starting to come on as we rode by the HUB and into view of Old Main.
Without the daytime bustle of students and professors hustling from place to place, campuses take on a different feel in the evening. A quiet campus evening also has the powerful presence of ghosts, of history at an institution that was here long before us and will last long after we’ve gone. There is a soul to a campus that draws breath from those who came before.
College represents a time in our lives when we were younger. We arrived with a slate upon which we wrote the poetry of our lives, to start penning the saga of our adult life’s journey.
Whether I walk on the campus of my alma mater Penn State or others, I feel it. On moonlit nights at the University of Virginia, I sensed centuries of history emerging from the grounds. I’ve walked dozens of campuses in the evenings and it always strikes me.
Campuses hold memories of a night turned magic by a first date, meeting the person one would later marry, or best friends sharing a night of laughter that lingers for decades.
But just as there are good memories and ghosts, for others there are some that haunt.
An evening can turn on one too many drinks, or one decision made to trust someone you met, or friends who fail to take care of you. It can turn when you push someone to do something that one or both or you will regret for a lifetime. It can turn on how you treat someone rendered vulnerable by alcohol or drugs.
Those nights end with ghosts that will haunt you or someone else forever.
That is something to think about for students. With the freedom on campus comes the responsibility to make decisions that can impact the course of your life forever.
There were nights in college when I did stupid stuff. We were just fortunate to live in an age without smartphones and social media.
Regardless of changing times what is unchanged is this: College can be a place you create lasting, positive memories. Decades from now, thoughts of friends lost over time will be triggered walking by a dorm or a classroom building recalling your own history.
But this can, because of decisions made, also be a place that years later conjures ghosts of a different sort, of a night gone wrong and pain that will never completely go away. Your actions could also make you a painful memory for someone else.
College is a beginning, a door to a new journey. The course students choose can stay with them for a lifetime. It can be a daunting challenge. But the key is to understand that your decisions have outcomes and outcomes have consequences. Respect for yourself, others and the rights of others is vital.
It’s easy to get caught up in the electricity of college life when there is a big party night that you’ve been anticipating. But nights gone wrong can haunt forever.
I don’t envy the world students are in. The potential problems and outcomes are far worse than they were when I started college.
Nothing can change that, so you can only focus on your own actions. Be careful not to place too much trust in people you don’t know well. It sounds cynical but there will always be shady people lurking. Understand that the person you should trust most in this world is you.
Your present actions will determine what you see in the future.
Years from now as you walk across your campus will you see ghosts of good days past?
Or will the lights of campus nights illuminate ghosts from the darkest recesses of your mind, the places that you never want to go? Will your actions make you someone else’s haunting memory that no amount of time will ever banish?
The hardest thing to do when you are young is to project how your decisions will echo across time and throughout your life or someone else’s life. But in college, where consequences of excessive alcohol- or drug-induced behavior loom, where peer pressure and worse yet, coercion, lurk, you must be careful on the path you alone can walk.
This can be a magical time in your life. That is what creates the excitement as each new school year begins. Tomorrow is known to no one but it will be shaped by what you do on any given day.
Riding across campus last week, seeing Penn State in that magic evening lighting, and seeing the new students walking around — I felt a sense of envy. Every alum envies the days you have ahead of you and the memories that you will now form on your college path.
Make the most of it, for it will fly by and will be a powerful imprint on your mind years from now when you return to your alma mater.
