As I stare my final undergraduate semester at Fordham in the face, perhaps now is as good a time as any to reflect on my years here. Fordham originally captivated me with its Jesuit tradition and its supreme location within the greatest city in the world. After graduating from Nation Ford High School in Fort Mill, South Carolina, the only home I had ever known, I arrived on campus in late August 2010 for Ram Van training, a week earlier than most of the other first-year students. It was one of the most depressing weeks of my life, and I called my parents every day until my roommates arrived to soften the blow of moving to a new city in which I knew virtually no one. I considered transferring for much of my freshman year, unsure how to reconcile my goals with the unfamiliar environment into which I had placed myself.
It got better, of course. Ram Van is like a giant adoptive family to any and all of its student workers. Ram Van is the great equalizer among students at this University, and those of us behind the wheel and desk are working hard to make it among the best identifiers of the Fordham experience. To the people in charge over there, namely Marc, Greg, Fred and Scott, I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude. Without them, I would not be the city-beating force of safety and courtesy that I am today. Cruising down the West Side Highway is not a bad way to earn work-study pay, and it has built immense character through interacting with some of the best (and, on those Friday 3 a.m. runs, some of the worst) people that Fordham has to offer. To all of the drivers and dispatchers with whom I have shared the magic and misery of rush hour in New York, which is seemingly endless some days, I applaud your efforts because I know most of the passengers will not.
Getting involved in many on-campus activities and groups is traditionally a great way to meet people, and my case is no different. I joined mock trial, campus ministry, intramural sports within the notoriously incestuous Tierney Hall (formerly of Manresa program fame and my freshmen residence hall) and was even briefly a member of the club Frisbee team. Along the way, I also managed to get a few bylines into the opinion section of the student-run publication then known simply as The Ram, and, for better or for worse, I was hooked on student journalism in the same way I had been in high school.
My relationship with this newspaper has been one of peaks and valleys, an oft-contentious battle against the process of putting something cohesive together on which I would be willing to slap my name. As a staff writer, I encountered trouble with the College Republicans in my second-ever story. That was almost a rite of passage, in hindsight. I wrote of carriage horses, college radio and LikeALittle; I discussed apps, rankings, the mystique of Mario Balotelli, the last LCD Soundsystem concert and New York City parking meters in an attempt to make those topics relevant and/or interesting in some way to whomever it is that reads this paper every week.
When I became the opinions editor, I spent countless hours in the basement of the McGinley Center waiting for final page edits to return and harassing the sports and news people with my buffoonery. To my assistants from that freewheeling year, Canton Winer and Ricky Bordelon, I express my sincerest appreciation, on behalf of the publication as a whole. Without you, I would still be staring at a blank screen on the computer trying to figure out how to create a half-decent page layout.
I would be remiss if I did not thank the most important people in my journey here, my parents. It was at my mother’s suggestion, in fact, that I even considered Fordham in the first place. Given my parents’ shared roots in New York, each standby flight I made into LaGuardia almost felt like a homecoming after a while anyway (the culture of standby, by the way, deserves an entirely separate and decidedly larger space, and I am almost sad to not have another year and another From the Desk to devote exclusively to flying standby and the aggravating marvels of the airline industry).
It has been nothing short of an absolute joy to call Fordham my school and New York my campus for the last four years, and that would not have been the case without the many incredible people I have encountered in my time here. I have no idea where I will be or what I will be doing a year from now, but I am certain that somewhere in my subconscious will forever reside memories of buffalo chicken wraps, ill-fated security alert emails and Edward’s Parade on the days when the weather treated us kindly.
To all present and future Rams, you have made a wise decision, despite the snarky Twitter accounts and critical editorial stances. To all who were with me throughout this particular trip: we are almost there, but let’s enjoy these last few months, shall we?
