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A few weeks ago, while scrolling UofL burner Twitter, I landed on a conversation about the best time of year to be a college student. I was struck by an evocative tweet that cited all the memories that are made in the fall, including the university festivities, the sports, the holidays, and many other situations.
I instinctively agreed with the poster until I recalled a more recent, far more subtle memory, but one that I think I will associate with my college experience for years after I graduate, because of the emotions it brought.
On a weeknight in late February, I had returned from a long day at my internship and headed to the affiliated apartment complex just off campus to heed the invitation of some friends. With no good basketball games on TV, we scrolled the streaming services and settled on a bad animated movie. It was a good chance to slow down & have a laugh to relieve the mid-week blues.
With homework to do and a little too drained of a social battery for the full lineup that was trickling in, I left a bit early. The days were tempering, so the weather was decent under the bright Louisville night sky. As I descended the bridge over the bisecting tracks, I caught a familiar glimpse of the sparkling skyline far to the north. A train was passing beneath me. Crossing the parking lot, I intercepted the criss-crossing paths of students walking to and from their parked cars to my left as they glanced at the co-ed soccer team struggling to practice on the turf field to my right.
Looking up over the field, I caught the third floor of the rec center through its panoramic windows, as it bustled with a late-night clash of two Greek intramural basketball squads. I had looked just in time to watch a silhouette heave a logo three straight through the net, sending hands in the air & a muffled crowd pop through the glass, off the checkered-lit windows of the Kurz Hall dorms, and over the turf field to where I was standing. I turned forward, continued walking, and felt the warm embrace of a sense of community.
The author of the original tweet shouldn’t mistake my framing of that memory. I think autumn in college is an incredibly exciting and memorable season. It’s undoubtedly hard to beat. But fall builds upon the return to campus, countless social events to ring in the new school year, and the added crescendo of the approaching holidays. It’s full of the noise that, while memorable, can be larger than college itself; recollections that serve their own purpose. Spring and the memories like the one I recounted stick in my mind because they represent a more authentic sense of the community that makes collegiate life so special. The winter solitude thaws, and before the noise of summer, of which there is plenty in Louisville, we’re drawn to community in its simplest forms. These simplest forms are the feelings that write the college experience, drive middle-aged graduates to recall their early 20s so fondly, and have been all but declared extinct in the world outside the university campus.
Tom is a McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville in the class of 2027. He is studying political science on the applied politics track.