When the news broke that we’d be finishing the semester online, a friend in my year texted me, “Jesus dude, I feel like I got my face slapped.” I responded by sending him the Nearer My God to Thee clip from Titanic. 

I think I speak for all members of the senior class when I say we didn’t expect it to end like this. For four years, give or take, we’ve been in Carlisle, contributing to the life of the college, and watching as the student body has a complete turnover in population. Based on the update emails the college has been sending students and faculty, the sentiment is that students will come and go, but the college itself endures. 

Current Juniors and Seniors will remember the off campus housing row from two years ago. During that, one thing that was made clear to us was that a good deal of our education comes not from the classroom, but from the interpersonal relations formed between students, and their professors, that come from living in such close proximity. I thought little of it then, but looking back, I do think I have learned a great deal just from being around everyone else at the college, debating and discussing long into the night as bed was down the hall.

I was ready for my time at Dickinson College to end, but I wasn’t prepared for how abrupt that end would be. When leaving somewhere, I often find myself spending the last few days wandering, visiting locations one last time. I took a walk through the libraries when I was preparing to come back from abroad for no greater reason than I knew it would be the last time for a long time I could be there. I envision I would have done the same for Denny 317, WDCV, The Dickinsonian office, and other locations both at the college and around Cumberland County. Now, with the semester occurring online, I fear much of what we all conceived of senior year will be lost.

For all the ill I have spoken of the college, in this moment I do feel somewhat nostalgic. I have found myself rewatching the part of the movie clip where Sir Thomas Andrews adjusts the clock as a drink slides from the mantelpiece. It seems to represent that even the best laid plans can go awry. My sentiments on the college as a whole are something else, but I will miss the professors and fellow students. 

This end does feel like a slap in the face, to have it end so suddenly, and with no recourse. Sir Thomas Andrews adjusts a clock on a sinking ship, just as we here scramble to collect our belongings, complete theses, and for me, the newspaper. For many of us, our college careers will soon be over. It may seem as though the long term approach, to suspend the residential ethos of the college, is the correct move, but I cannot help adjusting that clock.

Sincerely,

Drew Kaplan ‘20

Editor-in-Chief