The Wolverine experience is all about embracing new, unique opportunities

Think about the moment you decided you would be a Wolverine.

Not the times when you were a little kid and you wore maize and blue because other people bought it for you and everyone else was chanting, "Go Blue," if that is true.

Not the times when your friends were coming to the University, if that is true. Not even the times when you looked at a brochure and thought you could probably deal with living here for four years, if that is true.

Think, instead, about the moment you decided you were really going to be a Wolverine.

Megan Schimpf Prescriptions

While some of the class of 2001 have already been so enlightened, some others are doubtlessly wondering if the choice they made was correct, or if just maybe they should be headed elsewhere in a few weeks.

At the University, there are many groups of people. But when it comes to this question, there are two - those who basically could have filled out their application at birth, and those who aren't going somewhere else.

Those in the latter group will decide they are Wolverines sometime in the next year. And a word to those in the first group: Just because you have always loved the University from afar doesn't guarantee you'll be happy here.

I decided I was a Wolverine - meaning I finally felt like I belonged here - the last day of my first semester. After my last final - and, incidentally, my easiest - I bought one of those stickers for the car rear window to give to my parents.

That sticker meant I had triumphed. It meant all the obstacles a major university of 30,000 people throws at a first-year student, mostly unintentionally, were not enough to defeat me.

I still had lessons to learn, classes to take, situations to deal with and victories to earn, but I had taken most of the biggest steps. I had discovered that I could do this thing called college, this thing called being a Wolverine.

Once I had figured out how to survive, I could figure out how to live.

It is a rather inescapable concept to define - how to go about being a Wolverine. This is because it is a conglomerate of so many experiences and ideas - and the exact balance each person must strike between those entities is unique to each person.

The concoction entails what you do here, what you learn here, what you do when you travel away from here, what you bring back here and who you experience it all with.

Navigating the twists and turns of CRISP has enabled me to have incredible academic experiences with some experts in their field. I have been to lectures that leave the class stunned and silent, or inspired and exploring. I have read books and other writing that have left me amazed at the brilliance and perception of the human mind. I have created impressive projects.

And yet, I have also slept through lectures, been disgusted with teachers, ignored reading assignments and produced work that still bores me.

This is why the entire experience of being a Wolverine cannot be defined in lecture halls and classrooms. Without doubt, part of it should.

But the alumnus who never left home except to go to class should have a qualified diploma.

Because Wolverines do more than that.

The University has an incredible collection of opportunities stored in the miles surrounding our little Diag. They extend from the steps of the Hatcher Graduate Library to literally the ends of the world. To ignore them would be to miss part of why you originally decided to venture to Ann Arbor for four years.

That students learn just as much or more outside the classroom is overused to the point of being cliche. Yet that does not diminish the truth in the statement.

Stay up late into the night talking with your friends. Join a club or group and fill your time with meetings and events. Experience the joys and defeats of Big Ten athletics. Apply to the best internship or school - and get it. Take a road trip, just to go. Pull an all-nighter with a friend or two to finish an assignment. Cook a big dinner to treat yourself. Get all dressed up for the opera, a semiformal, a cocktail party. Be part of a tradition that Wolverines through the years have created.

In the process of defining yourself as a Wolverine, you will also define part of who you are and what you will be for the rest of your life.

Because what you now have before you are memories waiting to happen. If you let them happen, some will. But the ones you add a touch of effort to will be more meaningful.

Four years from now, when you leave here, you will have a piece of paper that proves to the world that you were at the University. You will be able to buy new maize-and-blue wear, for yourself this time, that also proves to the world that you were at the University.

Before then, prove to yourself that you are also a Wolverine.

- Megan Schimpf is a first-year student in the School of Medicine, a recent LSA graduate and a former Daily news and NSE editor. You can reach her over e-mail at mschimpf@umich.edu

09-03-97