Old School

A chance encounter a few days ago has got me thinking about my time in college.

It was December 30th, at the wake for my friend's father. We are friends from college, both members of the University of Scranton Class of 1989. We both still keep in touch with many people from Scranton, although not the same people. At the wake there were some people with whom my friend has kept in touch but I, for no very good reason, have not.

I met these people at the back of the funeral home and was greeted by our mutual friend. After she reviewed the programs I had designed the night before (based on her instructions delivered over the phone, consisting of basic birth and death dates and a special Jesuit prayer) and printed earlier that day, she was called away to resume her familial duties at the front of the room. As quietly and respectfully as possible our old friends and I talked and laughed and reminisced. The last time we saw each other was at our mutual friend's wedding several years ago. I had not seen their daughter in years, and had not seen their sons since they were toddlers. Their daughter babysits for one of our old professors, a charming and brilliant man with a penchant for marrying his former students. We spent many long nights over at his house during our Junior and Senior years, all of us and a few other friends, one of whom would eventually become his wife - for a few years, anyway, until he moved on to his next former student.

One of the two priests concelebrating the funeral Mass the next day was one of our old Philosophy professors, and he was also present at the wake. He and I never clicked on the level I did with many of my other professors, but we have always been civil-to-friendly through the years. We spoke together for a few minutes that evening, about how my father and his mother had both died in the previous months, about life and work, and he eventually worked out that while I live in Nanticoke, I work north of Scranton. Which means that I drive past Scranton twice a day. "Oh," was his whole response to this, one that carried a weight of disppointment. Why didn't I ever bother to stop over?

I used to spend quite a lot of time in Scranton. For a few years after I started working at my current job I would stop in from time to time to visit with Pam Tigrett, the secretary for Campus Ministries - someone who deserves a whole blog entry, and possibly several books. Pam died of cancer back in 1994 or so, and I stopped visiting as much as I had. But then one of my old friends came back to the University as a part-time professor, and for years we would meet at least once a month or so for dinner. Eventually he moved on to bigger and better things - well, better, anyway, a tenure-track position at a small midwestern university. And so once again I lost a connection to Scranton.

I miss those days. I miss the atmosphere. The U of S in the mid- to late-eighties was not known for students who were there to excel academically. Many - most - were there because their rich mommies and daddies couldn't get them into fancier colleges in New York, New Jersey, or Philadelphia and didn't want them staying too close to home. So they packed their kids off to Scranton, to party and take easy classes and kill time for four years before they barely squeaked through with a degree, hopefully without amassing too long of a police record.

But there were a few of us who were different, who were more serious about our studies, who were more intense about our lives. Many of us were concentrated into the SJLA, the Special Jesuit Liberal Arts program, which eliminated many of the meaningless elective courses and replaced them with specially-designed courses like Great Books and Logical and Rhetorical Analysis. This became more of a challenge when your primary major was Physics, although it made picking up a second major in Philosophy easier. (My friend who became a professor had a triple major.)

Hanging out with my friends from the SJLA made me think about my life and what I've done with it, where I'm going and where I've been, what roads I've chosen to get here and what paths I will choose tomorrow. I feel like I haven't lived up to my potential, that I'm wasting my life, that I've chosen the safe and the easy over the risky and the hard. I have walked away from things I shouldn't have, and I waste my time doing things I shouldn't do. I really feel like I'm in a rut. The question is, will I try to climb out of it, or just snuggle myself in its warmth and comfort?