There is a sacred ritual to which all Duke students are privy. No, it isn't freshman orientation with Party Boy Chad, getting lost off East Campus, paying $40,000 to live in a tent pitched on mud, completing your graduation requirements or even completing your "graduation requirements." The real sacred ritual is what you do to celebrate the last first day of your college career.
Unofficially known in some circles as "The Farewell Tour," the beginning of the second semester of senior year is full of preparations that set the stage for the last four months of college life as we know it.
Like any truly classic Farewell Tour, 2006 already promises to be big. As one senior pledged in December: "Next semester shall be a Renaissance. Not of art or music, but of drinking. And it shall be glorious. I pledge to never be sober more than 10 percent of the nights next semester, and I hope that all of you will join me in making the last semester ever a truly memorable one. And by 'memorable' I mean not at all because everyone will be blacked out the whole time."
True to their word, seniors kicked off their long anticipated Farewell Tour in style upon their triumphant return to Duke. For most people, the festivities began the week before the last semester of classes, which played host to nights of bacchanalian celebrations and days of hangovers and terrible dietary decisions.
The less fancy-free kicked off their Farewell Tour by filling out the always popular police reports for miscellaneous private property that was stolen from off-East Campus residences during break. (From what I hear, if you haven't filled out a police report yet, you haven't really lived). The second stop on that particular Tour naturally entailed scouring the local pawn shops in the vain hope of buying back their own stolen property.
Sure, say what you will about Durham, but for the select few this ritualistic trial by fire is just the city's way of hardening soon-to-be-grads and preparing them for the cold, uncaring world that lies beyond the bubble. Unfair as it may seem, an integral part of the Duke experience entails successfully surviving Durham for four years.
Just kidding.
Well, sorta-
I guess Durham is supposed to be like "that kid" from middle school-she wasn't really bad, she just had a bad reputation, which, ironically enough, is precisely what made "that kid" so memorable after all.
Despite Durham's tough love, it's home to local haunts that somewhere along the line became pillars of all that is "Duke" and "wonderful."
In the course of the last week, no fewer than 1,000 seniors must have treated themselves to a welcome-back dinner at Mad Hatter's and made a very necessary trip to Cook Out for Fancy Shakes before descending upon Charlie's, the Joyce or Satisfaction's with other marauding seniors to see and be seen... and to drink and be drunk.
But now that classes have begun, a new ritualistic phase commences, and seniors are forced to decide how they'll spend the rest of their numbered days. They must prioritize who and what is going to mean the most to them for the next four months. Making it to class before noon, for example, probably doesn't make the Top 5 Countdown of Things to Do Before We Leave.
At this point, if you're half as diligent as your application to this school suggested, your hunt for the perfect six-figure salaried job is long over AND you've been accepted to every Ivy League grad program for which you deigned to apply. Otherwise, I can only imagine that you must be one of the elusive "hippies" who roam campus and have it all figured out because you don't having anything figured out at all. One way or the other, dutiful class attendance is already not making the cut of "what really matters now."
Whether you accidentally slept through the first day of the last semester, very deliberately "took the day off," or just wound up on the wrong campus entirely (yes, it still happens to second-semester seniors), it's probably because there are simply other, more important things to do with your time in college than... to do- college.
Regardless of how you choose to honor your remaining time at Duke-in-Durham-be it with pub quizzes, with Bostock or with Big Beers in hand-do what you love. Make it fun and make it matter because you sure can't make it last.
Boston Cote is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every Friday.
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