Welcome to our world

The first few weeks of freshman year pass by in a blur. The minute-by-minute urgency of parental advice, picking classes, meeting roommates and finding your way around campus as a new Jumbo predominates all other concerns. There is plenty of advice around — from movies, TV shows, older students, professors and even the pages of this paper. Much of that advice is good, and that is because it's typically true. The heart of the matter is that you, the Class of 2018, have what it takes already.

You are Jumbos because you have the passion and joy for experiencing the world around you — that is the mark of a Tufts student. If you let that guide you up and down our beloved Hill, you'll find yourself in places you may never have expected. Make the conscious choice to shock the folks at home. Tufts rewards it, seeks it and lives off of it. The problem, the stress about starting, is how daunting everything is. That feeling merits a pause for reflection.

If, while walking around campus in these first weeks, you pass by Packard and East Halls, you may pass by a rock. The rock is a memorial to the poet John Holmes, a Tufts student in the 1920s and a professor of English until his passing in 1962. Its size makes it easy to miss, except for the line of poetry emblazoned across its face: "This is the world, the kingdom I was looking for."

Holmes' experience is bound to the time and place of his life, but what binds all Tufts students together is our school. When we talk about college, we talk about an idea in abstract, a process or series of actions. Life doesn't happen that way. This is our world — our very real place available for us to pause and take in. It's the opportunity, the time we all have to make something fantastic. The realization in "the kingdom I was looking for" is that, at the end of the day, when we feel like we're on a winding road between Introduction to International Relations and a degree or the first trip to Aidekman to see a play and the final bow, we find ourselves exactly where we want to be: in the place that makes it all happen.

The vigorous, fervent experiences you will feel in the coming weeks, months and years are a common experience with thousands of others, from everywhere in the world, who all came to the same real place. Tufts students past and present are connected by our shared physical location. This is our world, the kingdom we've been looking for. So welcome, Class of 2018.