College can be a fairly uniform experience. Our memories of events often coalesce to the point that it's difficult to remember exactly when and where something happened, or who you were with when it did.
There's always an outlier, though, in the mélange of collegiate memory: first semester freshman year.
Remember first semester freshman year? There's all those Facebook friends you met at Crazies on the Quad and never again, those Marketplace dinners you ate with hallmates you never talked to and those 8:30 a.m. classes you took before you realized you didn't have to.
Awkward may be overused when describing our collegiate interactions, but first semester freshman year is as awkward as it gets, even in hindsight.
Tonight, as I stand in Cameron Indoor Stadium for the last time as a Duke student, I will remember what has become one of the most awkward of my freshman year memories: my barely contained excitement for the Greg Paulus Era.
When we arrive on campus as freshmen, we often self-identify with our fellow newcomers on basketball scholarship, fueled either by the thought of spending four years with them or simply the Us Weekly "They're just like us!" quality of sharing East Campus or a C-1 with them.
For me, that player was always Greg Paulus-the guy who played the same position as I used to, who went to a Catholic high school with the same name as mine and who had the same weakness from beyond the arc as I do.
It didn't take long for Paulus to live up to high expectations-he was starting at point guard by the end of November. Joining a Facebook group calling him the future of Duke Basketball didn't seem ill-advised at the time. But then again, so little of what we do freshman year does.
Tonight, officially, Greg Paulus becomes the past of Duke Basketball.
Tonight is Senior Night.
It's inherent in Senior Night's inconvenient timing that it's not really a logical end; there's far too many games left to be played and too much of the legacy left to be determined for what happens tonight to be considered the culmination of a career.
Senior Night, however, allows for a lot of reflection back-on what was, what could have been and what ought to have been.
It's nights like tonight that force us to remember that it wasn't too long ago when the questions Sports Illustrated asked about the Blue Devils weren't things like "Can Duke make the Sweet 16?" but "Can Anyone Stop Duke?"
It's nights like tonight that remind us that a lot can happen in four years.
And nobody at Duke knows that better than Paulus, for, with apologies to Dave McClure and Marty Pocius, the story of the Duke Basketball Class of 2009 is the undulating narrative of its point guard.
From No. 1 in the country to out of the top 25, from freshman starter to senior reserve, from pass-first point to the team's best scorer and back, Paulus has experienced pretty much everything college basketball has to offer.
Except, of course, the Final Four.
"It's been a little bit different," Paulus said a few times in his press conference Monday, the point guard resorting to the phrase to describe his senior class' shifting membership, his senior year's alternating roles and his four-year career's vertiginous ups and downs.
Paulus also reminded everyone that tonight is not the end, that while the curtain closes on his Cameron career, there's still a season and legacy to be defined.
And so, as much as Senior Night wishes to celebrate the past, it can't help but peek at the future.
At North Carolina Sunday, at the ACC and NCAA Tounaments down the road.
And maybe even at the Final Four, that last new experience. Because that's one thing that could make the Class of 2009's and Greg Paulus' Duke experience just a little more uniform and a little less different.
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