Markman's Musings: Progress is not a dirty word

09/06/07 - Progress, say the latest political strategists, is once again a fine word to use in campaigns, whether you're talking about social services or the surge strategy in Iraq.Now a senior in college, I'd like to label myself a progressive. I'm not talking about voter referenda, a third political party, or even Hillary Clinton's stance on civil unions. No, I'm talking about moving on.

At some point in our lives we must all move on. Whether it's from a past lover, a band we thought was wicked cool in eighth grade, an addiction, or a way of life, everyone has to decide at some point to move on from past decisions and progress forward.

As college students we are constantly moving forward. We move toward the next semester, the next keg party, the next hook-up, the stage in May that many of us will walk across. I've been looking forward to that stage since I was in high school. I've always wanted to be one or 10 steps beyond where I am, and now, with months left until graduation, I take time to reflect on what I've learned, on what I've ignored in my education, and on what the future may bring.

I learned early on that college is not about conquests. It's not about how many seconds you can be suspended upside-down over a keg or how many girls you can "date." It's not even about grade point averages or how many 400 level you can pass. College is about progression. It's about starting at one point and ending up at some place else - some place where you feel more comfortable, more intelligent and more able to deal with the inadequacies of a hard world.

College is not about job applications and applying for graduate school. I learned that through living, not through a college introduction course or through an application of statistics.

Everyone's college experience is unique, and I don't profess to hold a barometer of progression for every student that crosses that stage in May, but if you think too much about receiving this or that grade, or going to this or that party, then you will have lost something vital.

I learned in college that if you follow what a professor says, to the minute detail, and you strive utterly in that direction, then you will succeed. Immediately, I ignored that lesson. Life is not about a narrow ledge upon which you must tread in order to succeed. It's more about finding the reasons behind why the ledge was sculpted at that point along the ridge and how it keeps you from falling. College may show you how to pass, but it doesn't always show you how to progress.

Take for instance the Resident Assistance program during summer housing. This may or may not coincide directly with my previous ledge metaphor, so please progress with patience.

I spent this past summer, along with the two previous summers, in university housing while working at a manager training program for the Ram's Den. Over the course of those three summers, I encountered two very different worlds.

One world invariably consisted of flexibility and acceptance: acceptance of the fact that many college students drink and flexibility in terms of authoritative response. I don't want to stir-up the past, but I will say that the ghetto of URI housing lay on this side of the housing divide. When students partied in those dorm rooms over the summer, the resident assistants asked for quiet and for responsibility, and let the rest of the beer tabs fall where they may.

In the other world, which is part of the new housing recently completed, the idea of clause expansion seemed foreign. The United States Constitution has been modified and reinterpreted hundreds of times by Congress and the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, those in charge of carrying out the rules, typed and distributed on pastel pieces of paper to each student resident, were so intent on walking that strict ledge without question that they failed to address the inherit openness of the college experience.

College is not about receiving pink write-ups for substance abuse violations, nor is it about contending with resident assistants every time a table is left in a hazardous position, or a dinner, eaten by those 21 years of age, is accompanied by beer. College is about responding to questionable situations with reason, foresight and intelligence.

I can now thank those same staff members for bringing about progression. Those who lived in Wiley Hall this past summer have the knowledge that life brings hard-asses, as well as easy As and two-for-one mixed drinks.

On that note I can't believe that I'm a senior. Three years ago I wanted to work with wild animals. I still like snakes and monkeys, and lions too, but now I'll be writing about them or maybe championing their cause.

Don't get me wrong, journalism is the only life for me, but one night this summer I picked up three closed-eye, no-hair newborn mammals from the road in front of my friend's house and I couldn't help to wonder what it would be like to care about people all over the world like I did those infant animals.

And that's why, despite my interest in nature and animals, I need to write. Politics infiltrates most of my topics, even when it's something of a stretch like stumbling across a threesome of newborn squirrels or skunks or moles. That's why I didn't bring them home, by the way. I didn't know what they'd become.

I've realized, through years of college and living, that there is only one life for me. It consists of writing, questioning, openness, and the progressive nature of constitutionally-valid alternative politics.

And my life and thoughts will no longer linger over one particularly dense, socially-crippled RA with a superiority complex and way too much time on his hands. Mais, c'est.