I didn’t want to write this column. It felt too much like I was writing an obituary of my time here at Notre Dame. How do I want to be remembered? Isaac Lorton was a 22-year-old man (child), from Prescott Valley, Arizona, who attended the University of Notre Dame. He majored in the Program of Liberal Studies and minored in Journalism, Ethics and Democracy. He liked to read, talk about ideas and argue about little things for the hell of it. He is preceded by 172 Notre Dame senior classes. He is concurrently passing on to the next life with a great gang of friends and a bunch of other people he wishes he had the time to meet. He is survived by The Observer staff, the Native American Student Association, future PLS majors and about 6,000 students, 2,000 of whom will endure the same fate as him next year. He was something. He had a love-hate relationship with Notre Dame; he loved his major and minor and actually began to feel some love towards South Bend near the end of his time here. It was kind of like Stockholm Syndrome. He would like donations to go to his roadtripping-around-the-world fund. He accepts all payments. Graduation is a ticketed event, but all are welcome to attend the memorials leading up to that day. So that’s how my obituary would read, but my time here was much more than what an obituary can convey. Yet, I don’t know how to put my four years here into words well either. That’s about the best I can do. They say that college covers the best years of your life. I don’t know who “they” are, but they aren’t necessarily wrong, yet. I have had some amazing times at Notre Dame, in Keenan Hall, at The Observer. I’m grateful for the fantastic experiences I have had, the people I’ve met and the friends I have made. I don’t regret sleepless nights in The Observer office, all-nighters looking out a Club Hes window writing a paper or trying to run a club without any funding. I don’t regret any of my experiences here because they have been the best four years of my life up to this point. But my biggest advice to anyone crazy enough to get this far into this column is to not listen to these omniscient generalizing “they.” I say “yet” because I hope people will go into everyday and every new year thinking this is the best year of their life. Nostalgia can be fun, but regret or living in the past can be crippling. How am I able to pick out my favorite memories when time hasn’t had the opportunity to erode away the memories that matter now but won’t matter in 40 years? Of course there are things that stand out in my four years, but only with time will I know if these are actually memorable memories. Maybe I am afraid my memories later in life won’t be the best years of my life, but that doesn’t matter because right now they are the best years of my life, and for that and for all the people who have made them so great, I am utterly grateful.
Isaac Lorton is graduating with a degree in the Program of Liberal and a minor in the Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics and Democracy. He would like to thank coffee and wants everyone to know it is a legal performance-enhancing drug. In the future he can be reached.
