It's the first step of a long journey - Placebo Effect

Finally, the work and effort of three years has culminated in that grandest of achievements: I am now a senior. So, to say the least, it confused me a little when, on my first day of class this year, I had to look at a map to find a building. Think of it! On my own campus, the place I've called home, or at least some sort of place of business, after three years, I, the great and mighty senior, was humbled by having to search out one of my classes.

Not that I minded so much, exactly. After all, I've gotten used to having to pick my way gingerly and with uncertainty around a campus I thought I knew, given the construction which plagued us for much of my junior year, but as that drew to a close, I thought that things had returned to normal, and I was once again the master of Homewood's ins and outs.

That's when Jenkins Hall hit me like a ton of Master Plan bricks.

I remember looking at the room schedule on the Internet, seeing Jenkins listed, and then staring off into space for a moment to wonder "Where the HELL is Jenkins?" I consulted guides, charts, astrolabes and sextants, and finally I found it, grotesquely conjoined to Mergenthaler in a bizarre, University effort to squeeze a few million more dollars out of a naming opportunity by adding another door with a different sign. I think I just might make up my own sign, mail a dollar to the school and declare that little hut on the freshman quad "Short Hall," or maybe "The S. Brendan Short Center for Little Hut on the Freshman Quad Studies." Not that I'm sure what kind of a discipline "Little Hut on the Freshman Quad Studies" would be - after all, there's really just that one hut, and aside from looking at it assiduously and taking measurements, to which only so much time can be devoted before there is nothing more to study due to the aforementioned spatially-limited nature of the hut - there is probably a limited amount of material one can work with, even if the hut is taken in a metaphorical sense. A metaphor for what, I'm not sure. Maybe man's struggle for security and the womb in a chaotic world or the claustrophobia of modern society or perhaps a nightmare of miming made solid. Perhaps it is a symbol for another little hut, which in turn has deeper significance. Or perhaps not.

But I digress.

As to from what I digress, I'm no longer sure. The trouble with tangents is their tendency to nest, so that, by the time one is ready to get back to the original topic, one no either no longer remembers it or no longer cares to discuss it. Sometimes both. In the case of this particular column, my guess would be that most readers have long since put the paper down in abject disgust, swearing never to read B3 again. A poor decision, my friend. There's far more to B3 than your weekly dose of "Placebo Effect," and far more to the Features section than B3. It's put together every week by hard-working, dedicated people who care about the product they produce and care about you, the reader. Or so they tell us.

I suppose if there's any lesson at all to be drawn from this - which may be doubtful - it is that even as seniors, on top of the tiny world which is JHU, there are realms yet unknown and uncharted. Put that way, it almost sounds inspirational. The long and the short of it is that senior year is not truly the end, but rather the beginning. It is the beginning of the rest of our lives, as adults and "real people." After all, that's why it's called "Commencement" when we leave here. The road ahead is long and winding, but, it must be granted, there is a little more time on this side of things, and it is our duty to this place and to ourselves to enjoy it. Eat, drink and be merry. For tomorrow, or in eight months or so, you must get a job, or go to grad school - or, in my case, go to Europe.