Were we so stupid?

April 1 passed just a few weeks ago and most of us didn't notice or didn't care. Ironically, a couple of years ago that day provided a life-changing moment. On April 1, we all eagerly drove home from high school to check our mailboxes to find out where we had been accepted to college. Letters freshly ripped open in our hands; we knew our lives would change irrevocably with the contents of the envelopes. We didn't need the ominous "something-important-is-going-to-happen-very-soon" music commonly heard in TV after-school specials -- it was pretty obvious that our lives were going to be dramatically altered. Yes indeedy, music or not, something important was going to happen very soon. Then, as summer rolled into September, we came to Penn nervous, unsure and excited about what college would bring. President Rodin told us how our lives would change dramatically when we were in college. How we would come into Penn economics majors and maybe end up folklore majors (read: parents' nightmare). How we might stroll into biology classes aspiring doctors, but come out aspiring writers. How our class was the smartest class ever to be accepted to Penn (which therefore makes the senior class consistently the dumbest class at the University. No one likes to talk about that). How within the next four years, our lives would change in ways even our fearless leader Judy Rodin could not begin to explain to us. Admittedly, I left that Convocation pep talk skeptical. Surrounded by 2,000 high school newspaper editors, 2,000 yearbook editors, 2,000 high school music stars -- and one fellow classmate who had told me that day that he was planning on working in Tanzania after graduation to teach a group of villagers how to create a social market economy (no, I'm not kidding) -- I was pretty sure that most of us were grounded and that we knew what we were doing. But as I watched thousands of pre-frosh tour Penn's campus this past week during Penn Previews, I couldn't help but think one thing: Were we really that stupid to think we actually knew what it was all about? Yes. Yes, we were. Last week I decided to latch onto a Penn Previews tour to see what the "new kids" would be like, and whether it would be easy to steal their lunch money. Pushy parents questioned and probed their tour guides as thoroughly as a Fling officer checking bags outside the Quad for a bottle of vodka. Embarrassed pre-frosh shuffled their feet, and stared at the ground, ashamed that their parents would (gasp!) actually ask a question. A couple of pre-frosh looked somewhat concerned when they saw a man in a chicken suit clucking up and down the Walk. Rightly. What President Rodin didn't tell us in her "begin-to-be-brainwashed-by-Penn-ideology" Convocation speech was that the difference between 18 and 22 is huge, and that it's not just academic. That the transformation from being an 18-year-old to a 22-year-old is not so much like that of a centipede to a butterfly, but more like that of a possum to a giraffe. We come in caring about April 1 as the day that we got into college; we'll leave caring about April 15 as the day we have to file our tax returns on our own, without the help of our parents. President Rodin talked about our years in college as an academic transformation -- more importantly, it's a personal transformation. It's not quite as physically awkward as middle school, but like seventh grade, college is a crucial transition period -- this time, not from childhood to puberty, but from puberty to adulthood. As Hey Day comes this Friday, seniors will graduate into the real world as juniors bang their canes on College Hall to become seniors. Sophomores will transform into juniors, and freshmen will finally no longer be considered sub-human within the community as they become sophomores. Everyone moves up a notch, and with the years, every one becomes a little smarter -- not just academically, but socially and personally. Each year at college changes you: freshman year makes you excited, sophomore year makes you interested, junior year makes you passionate and senior year earns you your license to take the wheels of what poet John Ashbery describes as a driverless car. Enjoy the ride.

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