Many seniors, including me, find ourselves reflecting on the past four years at Colgate before graduation. A phrase that gets tossed around a lot here is “Colgate is the best three years of your life,” and I would have to agree with that. At a school where being a first-year is uniquely hard, Colgate makes up for it in the subsequent three years.
A lot of the things we complain about are the things we’ll start to realize we will miss the most when we leave campus. We complain every winter about the weather, dodging patches of ice and trekking up the hill in blizzards. (Central New York winters never quite get easier.) We complain about the distance from “civilization” and how little we have in Hamilton. We get annoyed about how far the airport is and how challenging it is to get there.
And yet, with the calendar winding down, we start to reminisce about Willow Path after a snowstorm, the picturesque fields that surround us, and the value of living in a small town like Hamilton.
Colgate has not necessarily been the college experience that my 17-year-old self had pictured, but I can tell you without a doubt that it’s the one I am glad I ended up with. I expected to be at a big state school in some warm climate, so it wasn’t an easy decision to make when I chose to ultimately lean into the Colgate experience. But it is a decision I constantly thank my past self for.
The last few years on one of the most beautiful campuses in the country, with the people I find myself surrounded by, is something that I wouldn’t trade for warmer weather, easier access to a major city, or an additional few thousand undergraduate students. There is something about the way Colgate students love college that I haven’t heard in stories told by high school friends, and we are lucky to have that experience here. A lot of the reasons why we have such a tight-knit campus and school pride come from a lot of the things we complained about throughout our time on campus.
So, students: I urge you to take a little longer walk to class, stroll around the golf course and enjoy the scenery, and reflect on what might end up being some of the best years of your life. We have a lot to be grateful for from this school. These things that we probably take for granted every day here will be some of our favorite memories.
Antonia Shannon ’26 hails from Winnetka, Ill., majored in political science and religion, and will attend the University of Edinburgh for a master’s in religious studies. This article originally appeared in the Maroon-News.