My Long-Gone Sweatshirt
I’ve been thinking about my old college sweatshirt recently. My mother got it for me my freshman year, when I was experiencing the whole dorm-moving experience for the first time. It was a gray, hooded sweatshirt printed with the college name. It might have also had the phrase “Foresters” on it, the affectionate term used to describe students enrolled at Lake Forest College.
I no longer own that sweatshirt; it hasn’t been part of my wardrobe for over a decade. While I wore my fair share of sweatshirts as kid, as an adult I discovered I preferred the (slightly) elevated coziness of cardigans. I also found out I didn’t much care for hoodies then, as my long hair always got entangled in them. So I rarely wore that sweatshirt, and soon after graduating, I donated it to a Goodwill. It was time to move on to the next thing.
And yet, twenty years later, I’m finding myself thinking about that sweatshirt and wishing I hadn’t gotten rid of it.
College Adjacent
I’m self-reflective enough to know that the feelings I’ve been experiencing recently have never been about the sweatshirt. Rather, it’s for that time in my life.
One of the peculiarities of working at a university museum is that you remain adjacent to campus life. Having undergraduates work as Gallery Hosts means I regularly interact with college students, even if I’m not in the classroom myself. And as I listen to their anxieties, aspirations, and plans, I can’t help but think of my own college days. After all, I used to be an undergraduate like them.
Not that I pine for the good ol’ college days, mind you. As I’ve reflected in a previous post, I’m glad that I’m no longer the workaholic undergraduate I used to be. And I certainly don’t miss the tight quarters, uncomfortable furniture, and limited privacy of dorm life. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great college experience, and I’m still in touch with both my undergraduate friends and former professors. But I have no interest in reliving that life.
And yet, every fall especially, I find myself thinking about Lake Forest and the formative years I spent there.
A New Life Stage…
Of course, there’s a reason why I’ve been thinking about college recently. For starters, the fall semester just started at ODU, so I’ve been watching a new batch of undergraduates begin their college experience. I’ve also been in a reflective mood since finishing my Ph.D. a few months ago. But there’s another reason for my reminiscing: 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of my freshman year. In another four years, it’ll be the 20th anniversary of my college graduation. My college memories may live on vividly in my imagination, but they’re no longer recent. They’re from half a lifetime ago.
In other words, I’m approaching midlife. And it’s given me pause for reflection.
If I’m honest, I’ve been thinking about my burgeoning middle age for at least a year. It’s not that I feel any differently than before. Being in good physical and mental health certainly contributes to that. But I’ve also long joked that I’ve always had the temperament of a forty-year-old, from my preference for staying in most evenings, to my avoidance of smoking and alcohol, to my almost militant insistence on early bedtimes. In my daily habits, at least, midlife is less a slowing down for me than a continuation of routines I’ve had since at least adolescence.
But I’m still aware that life, while hopefully still long, is no longer an endless expanse of possibility.
…But Not a Crisis
Yet I wouldn’t call my reflections a midlife crisis. Like a lot of millennials during their twenties and thirties, my life didn’t resemble the Boomer vision of domestic bliss where I married my college sweetheart and settled down in my hometown. In the years since departing for college, I’ve lived in seven states and have been fortunate enough to travel out of the country several times. At various times in my life, I’ve lived within driving distance of both the Canada and Mexico borders. I’ve been lucky enough to forge a career in my field of study while still making the time to pursue my own interests. And while I’m a happily married homeowner now, that stability has only come within the last few years, after more than a decade of professional wanderings. In other words, I’ve done a lot, and I don’t expect that to change.
But I still find myself thinking about my college days. And what I find myself reflecting about is less the actual experience of college itself than the novelty of going out into the world for the first time.
College as Potential
Like many students, going off to college was a complicated experience. I was both excited and terrified to go to school. Up to that point, I’d been a homebody. Sure, I moved from Maine to Arizona when I was ten, but my parents had facilitated that relocation. On my own, I rarely ventured far from the house beyond the occasional sleepover or overnight trip.
Going to Lake Forest College was my first step in striking out on my own as an adult. It was one of the first times I explored the world independently of my family. It’s where I started to develop my own interests and preferences in food, setting, and recreation. While I’ve continued visiting new places and trying new things since college, none of it has ever quite matched the novelty of my first forays into adulthood at Lake Forest. In a lot of ways, the world never felt so open, so full of potential, as it did then.
And if I’m honest, I don’t know if today’s undergraduates experience the same openness I did. Between climate change, the pandemic, job and housing insecurity, and ongoing political turmoil, I think today’s youth encounter a world with a lot less potential than what I did. Not that my version of the world was rosy, far from it, but the existential dread was certainly less pronounced. And that makes me sad for them, because even if the idea of endless possibility wasn’t true, it motivated me to get out there.
Back to the Sweatshirt
Like anything in life, my college recollections will likely recede as these anniversary dates pass. After all, I prefer to live in the present and look toward the future. But that doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate my past. So while I can’t get my old sweatshirt back, maybe I’ll get a new one. Because while college may be long behind me, I’m a Forester forever.