This semester (not to mention the last few years) has flown by! I am adding to the legions of people reminiscing and unfortunately also having a public forum to express their leaving-the-nest issues.

I would like to start by thanking you, the readers of my posts for this semester. I value your comments deeply, even the intolerably rude ones, and I am grateful for your attention. Next, I’d like to thank Ashwin, the editorial page editor here at The DP for advice, being a sounding board for ideas and for generally letting me bug him. Finally, my undying thanks to Lindsey Stull, opinion blog editor, for suggesting this gig in the first place and for showing such remarkable patience with me over the semester (you’ll never really know quite how much).

Back to you guys. To the rising sophomores: man up already and start exploring this city. Philadelphia has a lot to offer (seriously) and you all (sophomores and others alike) would do well to start exploring and discovering. Whether it’s food (brunch=Rx or Ants Pants), or clubs (jazz around here, more conventional downtown), or art (First Fridays and antiques row are a lot of fun), Philadelphia has much to offer you. On top of studying like crazy, make sure you take the opportunity to fill up on such experiences. As great as New York is, don’t count Philly out — it has a lot New York does not.

Make sure you go see interesting speakers while you are here — not just the big names like Bill Clinton, but also great minds in journalism, philosophy (Daniel Dennett was just here), medicine. You won’t get much of a chance to hear them when you leave here, and at a place like Penn you get some great people.

Having a rich life here prepares you for making it rich when you leave, because you won’t accept your life being just about your job. Budding i-bankers may look at me in disbelief, and believe me, I share in the pain of having no life for two years, but there are still ways you can provide light relief to a gruelling schedule — even if it is only the tiniest, most infrequent distraction.

With that I prepare to take my leave and join the Spin archives, with articles floating around cyberspace for all time. Keep your minds and eyes open guys; it’s the best way to deal with a fast changing world.

Peace.

Below: The playing of ‘The Last Post’

Tags: exploring, seniors, thank you, the last post

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Higher Education, Ivy League, Penn, Philadelphia, West Philly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.