My Duke

Every single job interview I have gone through has included some variation on this question: "How did you choose Duke, and why was it right for you?"

I always want to look at them and just smirk, knowing they'll never understand. Sadly, experience has taught me that silence is simply not a good response to a question from a potential employer.

So I inevitably spout off plenty of cliches: It was a hard decision, and there are so many great schools out there, but having lived in Chapel Hill until the age of 10, Duke felt like the right choice, a homecoming of sorts. I continue to explain all of the wonderful things Duke offers: great classes and classmates, an intensely challenging academic atmosphere and palpable school spirit built around athletics-something missing from many of our peer universities.

I answer their question. I don't lie, but I don't exactly tell the truth either.

Because somehow I think the full and honest truth wouldn't suffice. I could never convey the image of a 17-year-old kid deciding on an impulse to click the "early decision" box while filling out his application-binding himself to a decision without ever having stepped on campus.

I could not explain how my time here has been, how lucky I was freshman year to end up in a dorm where I made meaningful friends and how unimaginably different my life would have been if I had been placed in any other dorm.

How could I depict the absurd role that luck has had in my experience at Duke? I can't tell them about the time I decided whether or not to pledge a fraternity by flipping a coin and hope to remain respectable in their eyes. And how could I explain that one trip to a neighboring school fundamentally changed the last two years of my life?

Could they understand how one class completely decided my major? How half of me has always wondered if that was the right choice, while the other half acknowledges that I never really had a choice, that it is and always will be what I am drawn toward?

But Duke is teaching me another lesson too. Happiness and success are not the same thing. They're not even close. How could I explain to my future employer that my buddy buying the ninth season of "Seinfeld" on DVD probably made me happier than being flown out to California for a job interview?

I can't. I can't explain my Duke-not to them, and as I write this, I realize I can't explain it to you either. It's too personal, too close to home... too mine.

Whenever administrators try to initiate changes to campus culture, I can't help but react sardonically. How could you change my Duke? They could try. They could shake up the social scene, eliminate greek life or reorganize the living situation.

But they could never touch my Duke because my Duke is ephemeral, indefinable and yet somehow more real than any building or policy. It is the simple humanity that creates Duke.

To paraphrase Dicky Fox from "Jerry Maguire," I don't have all the answers. At Duke, to be honest, I have failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my life, and I wish you my kind of success.

I know that this sounds like the kind of column you see coming from seniors in the last week or so of school each year. It might sound similar, but I'm going to tell you this: I have six months of Duke left before I graduate and then it is gone forever. For those six months, my Duke will flourish. Make sure your Duke does the same.

Jordan Everson is a Trinity senior. His column runs every Wednesday.