2008 Woodie Awards
The infamous 'f' word
Christina Catarino
Issue date: 9/23/04 Section: Features
- Page 1 of 1
Every year, we bid farewell to a class of decorated multi-taskers. We say goodbye to a class of established, diploma possessing students and, more sentimentally, to a class of beer pong record holders, drinking buddies, and friends. Somehow though, the overall personality of Marist has a way of remaining the same. It seems as though each graduating class is reincarnated in younger, more optimistic, and altogether less liver-damaged form every fall. These amazing near-clones are usually referred to as freshmen.
Here's a scary concept, but a fairly exact scientific study: go out to any frequented Marist bar and observe the freshmen. After any decent period of time, you'll begin to notice in at least one of these newly-liberated teens a recognizable sense of naivete and even eerily familiar patterns of behavior. If you look hard enough, you will find the kid who resembles you when you were a freshman. It's hard not to laugh at the wide-eyed group, so happy to finally be free of curfew and house rules. But it's even harder not to acknowledge the striking similarities between members of this group and your younger self.
The word 'freshman', otherwise known as the "f" word, can be thrown around with a widely varying and impressive range of negative connotations. (Walk into the girl's bathroom at Hatters at 2 a.m. and you might understand what I mean. Listening to the comments of the belligerent, you would think 'freshman' was an acronym for a fatal disease.) The truth of the matter, however, is that by the end of your senior year you hold nothing but envy for every single awkward orientation tour member timidly walking through the library. It is at that point that the "f" word becomes a nostalgic, sentimental memory. When you return old and wrinkled for alumni weekend, at the ripe age of 23, you will still be able to pick out the younger version of yourself. That's because Marist will never fail to reproduce our quasi-clones.
So, while the personal meaning of the word "freshman" will never stop evolving for us, our perception of the personality of Marist College will ever remain constant in our minds.
Here's a scary concept, but a fairly exact scientific study: go out to any frequented Marist bar and observe the freshmen. After any decent period of time, you'll begin to notice in at least one of these newly-liberated teens a recognizable sense of naivete and even eerily familiar patterns of behavior. If you look hard enough, you will find the kid who resembles you when you were a freshman. It's hard not to laugh at the wide-eyed group, so happy to finally be free of curfew and house rules. But it's even harder not to acknowledge the striking similarities between members of this group and your younger self.
The word 'freshman', otherwise known as the "f" word, can be thrown around with a widely varying and impressive range of negative connotations. (Walk into the girl's bathroom at Hatters at 2 a.m. and you might understand what I mean. Listening to the comments of the belligerent, you would think 'freshman' was an acronym for a fatal disease.) The truth of the matter, however, is that by the end of your senior year you hold nothing but envy for every single awkward orientation tour member timidly walking through the library. It is at that point that the "f" word becomes a nostalgic, sentimental memory. When you return old and wrinkled for alumni weekend, at the ripe age of 23, you will still be able to pick out the younger version of yourself. That's because Marist will never fail to reproduce our quasi-clones.
So, while the personal meaning of the word "freshman" will never stop evolving for us, our perception of the personality of Marist College will ever remain constant in our minds.