How do you describe Hamilton to your friends at home? Your parents? Relatives?
What do you think of when someone asks you about college? Is it your dorm, your classes, your favorite place to eat? Perhaps it is your friends and professors, or maybe a collection of memories from weekends spent on and off campus. Do you think about what you wish Hamilton was? Or, alternatively, what you are grateful it is?
A new year on the Hill brings with it a fresh awareness of our community’s identity. Upon returning, we experience various “firsts” — new and old — that remind us of where we are and our relationship with its inhabitants and institutions. There’s the first time stepping into an academic building you know will be a place of many late nights in the months ahead. The first time seeing someone you fell out of contact with over the summer (and subsequently, the question of whether you should call out and say hello). There’s the first Diner Wednesday, the first Pub Lunch, the first midnight Commons (!). The first night out, and then the first “Sunday Scaries.”
Even if it is your first year at Hamilton, you still might notice this heightened sense of past-present tension as you go about campus. Upon returning, you might ask, “Who was I the last time I was here, and am I still that same person a few months later?” The immediacy of our relatively small community can mask perceptions of change and development of the course of a school year, but, given the chance to step away for a while, what do we learn about ourselves once we come back?
This semester at the
Spec
, we’ll seek to gain a better understanding of what our Hamiltonian identity is at this moment. We intend to cast a wide net and encourage all voices to join the conversation. You won’t necessarily find this topic addressed head on. Instead, we hope to piece together perspectives that address some aspect of our thoughts on ourselves and each other — in art, opinion, achievement, controversy, and more. By December, we’ll take stock of where we are and see what answers can be found within a semester’s worth of writing.
Congratulations on the start of another school year. Let’s see where this one takes us.
