Another day late and one year older...

This post is mainly for all the old Grove City/WPACO crowd, but all the rest of you are welcome to read it as well.  (I know you're dying to hear about Sarah and I.   We're doing pretty much amazing.   More on the topic will have to wait, however, as it didn't really fit into the context of this post. --AC) 

It's strange how time passes.  Four years ago I was a shy kid still adjusting to life two months after moving to Grove City.  Three years ago I was dealing with the slump that follows high school graduation, and aiming for the academy.  Two years ago I was heading for college and still trying to figure out my life post-academy.  One year ago I was reminiscing on PB and looking forward to life in the apartments.  Now I'm here in Illinois, 20 years old, in a relationship, and about to start my Junior year of college.  The remaining two years of school have never seemed as short a time span as they do now.

When did we grow up?  The changes occured so slowly at the time that we hardly noticed them, yet here we are on the brink of adulthood.  My little sister's now the same age I was when I competed with WPACO.  Isn't that weird?  Those memories seem almost like yesterday, but at the same time, they seem so far away.  Cleaning my room before the move, I came across some things I had saved from back then...evidence, 1ACs, pictures, all of that.  It was strange looking through it all.  I found one of the original JJ pins... do you remember when we made those?  It's kind of funny looking back that I came up with the design--I didn't even really know JJ at the time....  All of my trophies, medals, certificates in different events...they were all such a big deal at the time.  Third place PA closed...Third place Maryland open...Fourth Place PA open...etc, etc, etc...they meant so much to me at the time, yet there they were collecting dust.  When I found my debate award from the PA Closed it was literally covered in rust...I guess some water had somehow gotten under the front plate and into the metal itself.  It seemed a rather fitting picture...Mrs. Moon used to talk about how it wasn't the trophies that mattered, and that we wouldn't care about them in the long run.  I guess I proved that from personal experience.  The awards mean almost nothing with the passage of time.  It's the memories, the friendships, and the growth that matters.

It's strange how even friendships fade.  Three, four years ago we had our groups, both in Grove City and at WPACO, and those friendships that were invaluable to me.  Graduating high school was painful for that reason--the thought of losing everything we had built up was, at the time, almost unthinkable.  Probably one of the most depressing things I've ever heard anyone say was when Bekah came up to me at the Pemberly, the night before my graduation and said "Goodbye, Drew, I'll probably never see you again."  Of course, I didn't lose you all then--most of our friendships grew even more over the next year than they had while I was still in high school.  With Carmen, judging at tournaments, various trips (remember the ski trip? or hiking?), and all the random get-togethers we had, it was almost as if nothing had changed.  A couple people moved on, but for the most part, everything was constant up through the summer before my freshman year.

Then college happened, and things changed.  It's amazing how much things can change just in going to a school 45 minutes away.  We were seperated, and those miles made all the difference.  I developed new groups of friends, and so did all of you.  The number one thing that I heard from people that first year when I came back was how much I had changed...not for the worse, not for the better, I had just become different.  I really didn't notice it myself, and no one could really describe it to me at the time either.  I had picked up new mannerisms, new interests...just changed in general.  In many ways those "changes" were just a continuation of the changes that had begun when the academy had turned me down, because the academy had been my life through high school.  I know that, because I had deliberately made it that way.  In New Jersey, I had generally been pegged as the "quiet, smart, nice kid," to the point that some people had their doubts I could make it at the academy.  Or at least that's the impression I got from some people, such as other cadets at Civil Air Patrol.  Maybe I was just reading my own doubts into other people's reactions, I dunno. 

Either way, though, when we moved from New Jersey to PA, I made a conscious effort to form my motivations and mannerisms around the military academy.  People always remarked on my stiff military step whenever I was walking, or the stern look that I had developed as my default facial expression whenever I wanted to look serious or motivated.  It was deliberate.  Many actors talk about taking on a role that they're playing in a movie to the point that they adopt that character's personality in real life, just to make it authentic for the movie.  In a way, that's what I did with the academy.  I took on the role of a military officer.  I put it into my step, my thought processes, and all my decision making.  Sometimes I took it too far.  Apparently I intimidated the judge at one debate tournament enough with my military demeanor that she commented negatively about it on the ballot.  Other people brought up to me how I always looked "stiff", "tense", "angry", or "like I was about to kill someone".  Apparently those attributes aren't desirable in everyday life .  Some of those things I changed a bit.  I actually remember one night my dad showing me how to slouch and walk with a bit more of a swagger so that I didn't look like I was marching everywhere.  Overall, though, I kept the military personality until the academy turned me down.

The academy turning me down essentially caused a pendulum swing in the other direction.  I was confused, and trying to figure out what my life should look like now that I wasn't aiming for the military.  I grew my hair and beard out (to the point that I pretty much looked homeless, as many of you were kind enough to point out, haha ), lost a lot of motivation, and slouched a lot more.  I dropped a lot of the image I had built up for myself around the academy, such that people at Geneva now can barely believe it when I tell them that I had almost been accepted to the academy, or that that had been my goal for ten years.  Shoot, I think some of my friends at Geneva still may not know, which is surprising to me, considering how much I talked about it when I first came to Geneva.  It wasn't until later that I realized that I was still bitter about the academy when I first came to Geneva.  It's taken time for me to really accept that Geneva's a better place for me. Especially as I am now, haha...the current me wouldn't last a week at the academy.

My first two years at Geneva, then, involved a lot of me trying to figure out who I was and what my life should look like.  For example, by the year after high school, I had myself convinced that I was an extrovert, mainly because that's the kind of person I thought would do best at the academy.  It didn't take long at Geneva for me to realize that I am actually very much an introvert, and get worn out by too much activity very easily.  It's been difficult sorting it all out...trying to figure out how much of the "military" behavior/mannerisms are really me, and how much of the "pre-military" behavior/mannerisms are really me.  (For those of you with interests in Philosophy, it's almost a thesis/antithesis/synthesis model, with the original thesis being my pre-military self, the antithesis being the military self-image I constructed for myself in Grove City around the academy, and the synthesis being where I'm ending up now.)  I dunno, I guess it's partly made difficult by my easy-going personality--I tend to behave as I think others expect me to behave.  Thus, when going for the academy, I behaved as I thought an ideal academy cadet would be expected to behave.  Similarly, at Geneva, I tend to behave in such a way as to fit in with the guys from PB/Y2.  (I guess everyone does that to some extent, especially upon starting college but I think I was affected by it more than others, especially coming into college after being rejected by the academy as I was.  I dunno.)  Anyways, that "chameleon" feature of my personality has made it rather difficult for me over the past two and a half years to figure out how I should be acting post-academy. It's been difficult to figure out how much of my driven academy personality was really myself, and how much was part of the "role" I was playing, and it's been something I've struggled with on occasion.  As time goes by, however, things have tended to sort themselves out.  This past year has seen the end of that pendulum swing away from the academy (characterized by confusion, uncut hair, long beard and a lack of motivation ) back towards more of a middle ground.  I'm not extreme military now, but neither am I as confused and unmotivated as I was freshman year.  We've hit more of a synthesis.  What that synthesis is, well, you'll have to judge for yourself. 

Anyways, that was all a long digression.  I guess it was kind of applicable since I was talking about changes over the past two years.  I don't think I've talked about it to that extent before, as it was something I was trying to figure out more towards the beginning and middle of this past semester, and I haven't posted in forever.  If your eyes glazed over while reading it, and it made no sense, I apologize...just skip to the next paragraph.

I started out talking about how things have changed since I started college.  I changed.  You all did, too.  As time went by that first year, the frequency of our conversations tended to drop down as we started having less in common.  As this past year progressed, I've lost almost all contact with all but a few of you.  You developed your own friends and groups, mostly at GCC, and I developed mine at Geneva...and somewhere in the middle, I kind of faded out of the Grove City picture.  It's strange how time changes things...  I used to be at the core of the group, but I realized this past semester that whenever I came back to Grove City I was now a visitor to the group, simply because we no longer had the same experiences to talk about... You all would start to discuss classes and professors and events at GCC and I'd be lost, and I'd talk about things at Geneva, and beyond a certain point you all could only nod and smile...and we slowly lost touch.  Some of you I talked to almost every night before college, and now we talk maybe twice a semester.  The same thing happened with WPACO.  As people have graduated and moved on, I've lost touch with most of you, and with the club itself.  I showed up at the fundraising banquet this spring and barely recognized anyone. 

Maybe because of all this, the move to Illinois has really had very little effect on me...in many ways I was already gone from Grove City before I left.  I've moved to Illinois, but in one way or another, we've all moved on, and we never really saw it happening.  It's bittersweet.  I think what Douglas MacArthur said of old soldiers can be applied to friendships as well: "Old friendships never die; they just fade away."

That being the case, even though I'll probably be around a bit in the future, I just want to thank all of you from Grove City and WPACO for those few years we had when we were together.  They were short, but they were good.  Thank you all for being there for me, for laughing with me (and at me ), for putting up with me, for trusting me, for including me.  Thank you for everything you taught me, as we grew together.  Thank you for the memories.  Two different songs come to mind here...the first is The Leaving Song by Stephen Speaks. The second, for those of you unfamiliar with Stephen Speaks, is the Breaking of the Fellowship track off of the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack.  I know most of you have that one.  Listen to it for me, and remember the way things were back then.  For a brief time, for those few years our paths lay side by side on the journey God has marked out for us.  Now our paths are separating.  Just a couple more years and we'll all be on our own out in the world.  Strange, isn't it?  This time seemed so far away back then, yet here we are.  Four years ago I was just meeting all of you.  Four years from now, who knows where we'll be? 

I'll probably see all of you again, but for all of you I pray God will be with you, strengthening you on your journey for wherever you go.  For those of you I won't see, God bless, and I'll look forward to catching up with you on the other side of the Jordan.  All of you, thank you for everything.

The Lord bless you and keep you;

                       the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.