A Walk Through Santa Clara University

I am pleased to say that, in spite of ChatGPT and whatever else may threaten our generation's scholars, college campuses still smell like laundry detergent, cheap beer, weed and faraway French fries. There is less cigarette smoke these days, and that is a shame — there is nothing like a stranger’s cigarette on a crisp spring evening — but these are very good smells, excepting the weed, and will keep our youth grounded in reality in spite of themselves. I know they did, for me.

I have not changed too much since college days, a boy who whistles. Perhaps less of that misplaced self-certitude — although we miss that overconfidence, that spiritual drunkenness that is thinking everything you think is worth saying or writing. You grow sober as you grow older; but you also grow quiet, and write less. Growing older is thus not advisable for speakers or writers, although it can improve politicians.