This will be my last article I will ever write for globe, so I wanted to get sappy. I know, I know. No one likes the emotional dude who reflects on all the good times they had, but what can I say? I’m human.
This college has given me so much. A home for two whole years, friends who I will cherish for a lifetime, experiences that I shall never forget, and a spirit that will endure until the end of my days. Whether we have realised it or not, every single one of you who has shaped me and every other student at this college. It could just be a simple conversation or a shared collection of silly occasions, but they all are drops in this large sea that we call our collective experience. I could go on for a while about this sentimental metaphor, but I think instead, I will show you exactly what I mean.
In my first semester at college, a drunk person took a shit on the windowsill of a bathroom during on the year’s first party’s. That’s right, they shat (the past tense of “to shit”) right on that windowsill. The result was probably the most hilariously funny and uncomfortably serious speech that PC ever gave us, in which he said the bracketed quote. That same semester, I participated in the ICAC play, and got to know not only my own college mates who were in the production better, but also students from the college crescent as we trod the boards. In that very semester, I heard perhaps one of the greatest stories of revenge against a milk thief on Scheps 5th. I won’t go into many details, Nishq can fill you in if you’re curious, but let’s just say the whole situation left someone feeling shitty. (Jeez this first paragraph talked about a lot of shit).
The next semester, even greater heights were hit. I co-directed a musical with Freya McGrath, Fame, and we got to enjoy the remarkable talent of so many IHers (#remember). We had Jun Kit Wong perform an amazing version of Let it Go that won him the Mr. IH crown. Cindy Nguyen, our wonderful former president, finally learned what a T-Swizzle was, as well as what the word “pls” means. The YO app gained a small cult following for a short time, although they failed to convert Meagan Mcdonald, a staunch advocate of common sense against the app. I missed my first ever exam, a time in my life where I felt amazingly horrible and learned a valuable lesson about checking your timetable.
This year, well I feel it has been summed up well by our wonderful Satadal. We laughed over a myriad of running jokes and memes like Harambe. We cried over losing someone so dear to us that it feels like the world has grown so much smaller without them. We loved and hated and argued and came together, all under the broad expanse of this amazing college. It has been said over and over, our great motto of this college is Fraternitas, literally meaning brotherhood, but for all of us, meaning family. Blood is thick, but our bond over this time has been irrefutably thicker. We recognize each other, through blue and yellow attire, through our love of international cooperation, through our ability to see the amazing beyond the skin.
I hope to return many times after I have left, down the years to see where all of us have gone. What avenues we have chosen and the new stories we have added to our books. Because that is what it means to be a college student. It has nothing to do with money as some would think. It has nothing to with arrogance or entitlement or seclusion. It has to do with sharing our lives together, pouring out and taking in, every mote of life lived at this wonderful, strange, and complex place that we eagerly and with pride call our home.
Once an IHer, always an IHer.
– Hamish Plaggemars
