Why I am writing a column

I feel there is no better way to start my column for the semester than to share the reason why I have chosen to write it. Simply put: I think I missed a lot in my first few years here at Duke, I think it may have been different if I would have known then what I know now and I hope that by sharing the lessons I have learned you might be able to make more of your Duke experience than I did. Though that pretty much sums it up, a little background might be helpful.

My life before college was probably quite similar to most of you: packed full of sports, extracurriculars and the other unique eccentricities that made us interesting enough to get into Duke in the first place. Hence, being on the pre-professional track, when I arrived here I decided it was time to cut down on my laundry list of extracurriculars and focus simply on grades and enjoying college.

This materialized into the following: Monday-Wednesday: procrastinate. Thursday-Saturday: Go out. Sunday: Study. As for the going-out nights, things were pretty typical: pre-game with your dorm friends, consume as much free alcohol as possible on West while pretending to care which frat you were in, stumble to the club that was "on" for the night in hopes that the cutie you met in sociology might be there, and finally recap the ridiculousness of the night at the Marketplace during brunch the next morning. As fun as this occasionally was, it still felt like something was missing. Unfortunately, it took me nearly three years to figure out exactly what that was.

As much as I wanted to think my routine was every bit as passionate and diverse as it was in high school, my life really came down to three things: ladies, liquor and the letters on my report card. Don't get me wrong, grades are important for all of us, alcohol CAN make for some incredible nights, and there are few things better than a beautiful woman that has her eye on you. Hence, it was not that these concerns were bad in themselves, but rather that they were taking up SO much room that all the things that used to make my life vibrant, rich and spirited were getting displaced.

I know what many of you are thinking. "Maybe the stereotypical frat boys and sorority girls define their lives by such narrow categories, but not me. I am involved with and care about a lot of things outside the bubble of Duke." For those with this sentiment, I have a very timely response (as both fraternities and sororities are in the middle of rush): though greek stereotypes may subsist at a certain school to the south of us (thank you Borat), few to none actually exist here. The backwards-hat-wearing guys slamming beer cans against their heads on Saturday might be co-authoring a new economic theory on Sunday, and the dolled-up girl in pearls across the bar may have spent her summer in Africa working on AIDS prevention. Thus, I believe our unbalanced campus culture is not a result of a few extreme meatheads and bimbos, but rather the willingness of us all to occasionally act like idiots.

Therefore, my goal for the column is to help all of us (including myself) to try and look outside of our standard concerns-to move outside of our daily college lives and look beyond the bubble. For those that are perfectly happy staying inside, I challenge you to read the column every other Wednesday and tell me why you disagree. For those that have been living outside from the very beginning, I hope you might contact me and share your experiences.

But finally, for those of you that sense things are not quite right, that there seems to be something missing and occasionally feel isolated by your dream that life could somehow be more, it is mainly for you that I write. My simple hope is that you might know that you are not alone and that you find your own "home" here at Duke faster than the three years it took me.

Mark Stoltenberg is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Wednesday.