I haven't been on campus since I graduated in '90. The only live connections I have had with ND have been through screaming at the TV on fall Saturdays, seeing the Irish stomp Air Force in Colorado Springs in '91, and having Rich "Sweet Ike" come to my wedding. I've been schooling in New Mexico and Wyoming. Getting my first Otter Periodical recently was a real nostalgia trip. Maybe we've all heard that the Dome seems a little (Ha!) tarnished while you're there and gets more and more golden as you live life as a graduate (repression is a wonderful thing) and pay off your student loans, I didn't think it would happen to me.

Phil Marin and I have spent a lot of time in areas where people see the interlocking ND symbol on your clothes, stuff and tattoos and ask, "is the N.D. for North Dakota?" (Incidentally, the University of North Dakota even call themselves the FIGHTING Sioux along with ripping off the classic interlocking ND. The nerve.) Many of you born and bred in more civilized regions call that "hick" behavior. I used to beg to differ with all of you on that. I've faced reality since. Many folks out here in the hinterlands see Notre Dame as a Frat/Sorority, Biff and Buffy in Polos and penny loafers, East Coast Ivy League school. It's hard to answer questions about ND having these myths to dispel. Sometimes it makes the distance seem even greater, the memories even cloudier.

You know, there were and still are a lot of aspects of Notre Dame that just plain suck. It's the people I met, jerks and gems alike, and walked along with along the way that made it what it was for me. Chowing at the "Sorin" table in South Dining Hall with a dozen unshowered Otters in baseball caps on a weekend morning, playing Bookstore Basketball against a team loaded with scholarship athletes, playing really bad Ice Otter hockey at midnight in the ACC, sitting on the porch taking in the smell of BBQ and sound of the fight song on fall Saturdays, thumping down the stairs to pick up yet another Foodsales pizza you can't afford and washing it down with what's left of the case of Goebel's from the weekend before, scoping over the top of your open text on the 2nd floor of the 'brar, building the dream loft in your room, decorating Sorin up to be Puerto Vai-Otta for an SYR: these are things difficult to explain to a person outside of the ND/Sorin experience. These are things that we all shared, and whether or not many of us ever see each other again, these things keep us close.