Opportunity knocks

Dead weak. During the fall semester the week before finals is filled with scrambling to pull grades up with extra credit, begging professors for paper extensions and nervously biting pencils as you cram for the last exams of the semester. But the looming summer alters the last 10 days of the spring semester. Rather than be too concerned with classes, students are busy considering internships, going home and returning to old friends and family or looking down the treacherous path that is the long-distance relationship.\nThere is no doubt that summer brings with it a certain ambiguity about life direction for many students. The majority that spent the full school year in the professed “bubble” that college students live in are again faced with the only contact with real life that they have experienced. Each will have to face that reality, at least for three short months (which can feel like a week or a year). And while we each face our own precipice, we will be thinking often, whether in longing or discontent, of the scholar strewn paths of our IU.\nBut the summer should not necessarily be taken as a disruption that will merely interrupt the current livelihood of students. Rather, the paths available should be cherished. As good friends trickle away, new friends will take their places. When the work is done, new tasks will become available to keep your mind sharp. Old loves of winter will give way to new loves blooming at the end of spring.\nFor those graduating, IU will move to the rear of their memories at least for a short time until one day remembrance turns to sentimentality, sentimentality turns to regret, regret turns to nostalgia and nostalgia turns to happiness. And around the corner from all of these feelings are the doors that have been unlocked as a result of the education received at their soon to be alma mater. \nThe point, ladies and gentlemen, is that if you listen, while the sound might be to faint to hear at times and at others thundering relentlessly, you will find that with every situation that we Hoosiers encounter, somewhere, opportunity knocks. Opportunities will take many forms for each of us – whether it be a business firm impressed with your resume resulting in an internship or job, the chance to travel the globe in an overseas study program, a career that takes you to exotic places, the opportunity to remain in direct contact with your best friend or the acceptance of a marriage proposal from your college sweetheart.\nSo as summer approaches and we prepare to confront whatever situation presented to us, thoughts should not be solely focused on the losses that we might incur. The chances given to IU students are exponential and we should enter them with the full weight of our IU educations (both inside and outside the classroom) behind us. The rapping of opportunity approaches. Remember to open the door.