A funny thing happens on the way to growing up -- a lot of years
go by. One day you're walking around the lakes, trying to figure
out how you'll fit into the real world, and the next thing you
know you've got kids of your own facing the same dilemma. In between
is a blur of living -- dating, marriage and children, careers,
housekeeping and all manner of callings, demands and responsibilities.
So pretty soon, instead of trying to figure out how you'll fit
into the real world, you realize you already have.
One of the many good things about working here at Notre
Dame Magazine is that the six of us have been together long
enough to have gone through a lot of life together -- not exactly
like family or best friends, but close. We've ridden some crests
and troughs, experienced life's ebbs and flows. But we've never
forgotten those first years out -- that period, right after college,
in which the dreams, ideals and aspirations meet reality head
on.
That's what the cover package for this issue is all about: Notre
Dame grads getting welcomed to the real world and discovering
some things their parents hadn't warned them about -- things like
finding the right partner, or what life is like when you enter
(with the chosen one) that joint venture called wedlock. Or when
jobs aren't what you want them to be. Or when life in the big
city isn't so glamorous. Or when your college buddies scatter,
or you hit the wall, having gone from super-achieving, fast-rising
star to temp service worker just trying to make it day to day.
Or when security and status hinge on your performance in a bathtub
race.
Doing a cover package on this phase of life seems especially
appropriate these days. The typical alum is not the guy editors
imagined when the magazine started. Some 26 percent of Notre Dame's
alumni/ae graduated in the past 10 years, 40 percent in the past
15. About 25 percent of all graduates are women.
One of the most gratifying aspects of this group of stories
is that we've known the authors since they were students. They
were magazine interns. They were in classes we taught. They wrote
for Scholastic and The Observer. And now, here
they are, find writers and a cartoonist, good people offering
insights, honesty and humor, documenting their transition from
college student to citizen of real-world America.
It is no coincidence that in this issue we also honor the staging
area, the point of embarkation, the launching pad -- the Camelot
called Notre Dame -- by offering a list of things that make Notre
Dame so great, a compilation of people, traits, practices and
idiosyncracies that make this University so comforting and so
special. At the end of that list is one of the most essential
ingredients -- a tribute to the lifelong friendships first forged
here by students on the verge of adulthood, trying to figure out
just how they'd fit into the real world.
One way is through service; about 10 percent of today's grads
do volunteer work after graduation and many others make it a job.
A glimpse into the reality of that world can be found in Perspectives.
***
(January 2004)
