It's I.S. Monday. Thanks to last Monday I've been thinking about Wooster a lot lately. Heck, thanks to a movie I watched Saturday night, I've been thinking about my I.S. a lot lately even. (A Serious Man. It's like they read my I.S. and don't want to prove me wrong or something....). Today, thanks to a conversation that was pretty "Wooster-centric" that I had last week, I even kind of changed a students life with a story.
But that's not surprising. It should be the least surprising part to any of the previous paragraph. Wooster changes lives right? That's what Loren Pope said at least, in his book.
I can't argue with him. Who I am today, I am because of Wooster, perhaps more than anything else.
Check it:
I wouldn't be the Christian I am today without WCF. I don't even know if I'd still be a Christian. Maybe I would. Maybe, if I went to OSU and got involved in InterVarsity, my life wouldn't be THAT different. But who knows? I went to Wooster, and that's where I found out how to follow Jesus with my life and not just my words.
I wouldn't have ever met Alexandra. "But you met her at home!" you could argue. But I met her through a connection I made at a church I went to because I went to a church...in Wooster.
I wouldn't be moving to Cleveland. I wouldn't love Cleveland.
I wouldn't value everyone as a human. I wouldn't try to love everyone. I wouldn't look for the good in everything, if there' any to be found.
I wouldn't feel like someday, I could write a book. Why do I feel this way? Because, to some extent...I already have. It's 100 pages long and it's called "The Dude Abides: Exploring Post-Modernism Through the Films of Joel and Ethan Coen by the Decentering of Modernist Aestheticism in Le Politique Des Auteurs".
But all of that is just a list of things that immediately come to mind. There's more...much more. I'm more well adjusted to life. I'm probably smarter. I'm sure, really, I don't know all of the ways Wooster changed me, for better or for worse. Most of the time, I can't actually convince myself there was any "worse."
There's just a connection; an ever-present, overwhelming sense of communality and unity. "I Did It!" and so did you...even though I don't know your name or understand your topic or agree with your thesis of your thesis. You did it. I did it. We did it.
I miss Wooster a lot. Hillsdale is not Wooster, not by a longshot. I get told, far too often, that my education wasn't as good because it wasn't "Hillsdale." If that's true, then I'd rather have a worse education, because I wouldn't trade what I did have for those four years for anything in all the world, or for everything I am and have now because of them.
But I.S. Monday, then graduation, they're a starting line. Upward and onward, to somewhere and something...it's why we went at all, it's why we wrote at all, and it's where we're headed.
Today is about, primarily, the class of 2011. But to every single Wooster alum from years prior, it's our day too.
How quickly two years have gone...
-Zack
#27, class of 2009
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