College: Five Glorious Years

“College: best five years of my life,” and the term “super senior,” are the not very funny jokes you usually hear when someone takes five years to graduate. But for me and the thousands of fellow members of Northeastern University’s graduating class of 2003 who packed into the FleetCenter (what is now known as TD Garden) on an early Saturday morning in June, our five years of higher learning were no laughing matter. Because Northeastern is a five-year school. It’s what makes us special… and more in debt. It’s kind of our thing.

But no one told our graduation ceremony’s keynote speaker — former New Jersey Governor and former Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency Christine Todd Whitman about our thing.

Whoever helped her write her speech did a great deal of Northeastern homework, which was evident by her name dropping popular on-campus spots like Chicken Lou’s and Wollaston’s masterfully into her remarks. Unfortunately, that speechwriter didn’t do enough Northeastern homework. Because the former governor said “the past four years,” repeatedly throughout her speech. Every single time she said “four,” the entire arena would yell “FIVE.”

She never caught on to it, which actually made it even more fun to do.

This was a fitting way to say goodbye to Northeastern, correcting someone about one of the two biggest differentiators of the school I fell in love with on a visit during my spring break senior year of high school in April 1998.

The other feature that is nearly unique to Northeastern is its Co-Op program, or cooperative education program. I can explain the co-op program to you or I can just copy and paste from Wikipedia.

Northeastern features a cooperative education program, more commonly known as “co-op”, that integrates classroom study with professional experience… The program has been a key part of Northeastern’s curriculum of experiential learning for more than a hundred years and is one of the largest co-op/internship programs in the world.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

So I picked a school that’s five years, and has this thing called a co-op program. And because of this weird five-year, co-op thing, we were on a very different schedule. While many of my high school classmates went off to college and were all starting this next chapter in their life in late August, I was still at home anxiously waiting for mid-September to roll around.

I had so many conversations in the latter portion of the summer of 1998 that went a lot like this:

Friend/Friend’s Parent/Nosy Person I only sort of know: Hey Tim
Me (after trying my best and ultimately failing to avoid said person): Oh, hey
F: I thought you got into some fancy school in Boston. Why are you still in Bridgeport?
Me: Yes, I’m going to Northeastern but I don’t start until September.
F (with a heavy dose of skepticism): Why’s that?
Me: Because it’s a co-op school and we’re on a different schedule.
F: Co-op? What’s that?
Me (wishing I was in the future when we all have cell phones so I can pretend to be getting a call to escape this conversation): We have to do internships for like half of the school year.

And it would go on and on like this for some time.

It was a rough start to college, and I hadn’t even gone to Bed, Bath & Beyond yet to buy all those unnecessary items like that whiteboard or shower caddy thing that never even got unpacked. But it was just a few weeks of uncomfortable conversations with random people I was running into at the mall or Merritt Canteen (that was a total Christine Todd Whitman move right there, name dropping a popular Bridgeport eatery like that).

You might be thinking that all those uncomfortable conversations are worth it, if the co-op program was what really sold me on the school. So what, I have to tell some people who care way too much about why a 17-year-old is still in town in early September. When these five years are over I’m going to have a resume full of experience. You might think that’s what I was thinking when I chose Northeastern. But you’d be wrong.

I actually chose the school because I wanted to go to a school in a major city in the northeast (New York, Boston, Philadelphia) and I wanted to go to a big school because I went to a tiny elementary school and high school and it was time for me to the little fish in the big pond. Northeastern was both big and in a major city in the northeast (it’s not just a clever name). Co-op was just kind of a bonus, a fun little add-on, like seat warmers in a new car.

Co-op was just an added feature, but it also gave me a chance to work at Disney World thanks to their College Program (we’ll cover that in a future blog post). I was also a production assistant who occasionally got to write for a show that you could only watch online, way before anyone was watching TV shows online, so I’m guessing none of you ever actually saw my work. I know I didn’t. And I was a communications intern for a nonprofit organization that was based on an island outside of Boston, yes an island — my commute was a bus to a train to a boat. And on more than one occasion, I literally missed the boat.

These internships gave me some work experience to put on the resume, very little to no money, and most importantly, they gave some very interesting life experiences.

But no life experience I picked up on any of these co-op jobs was nearly as important to me as the time I spent on campus. I mentioned the rough start I experienced before I even got to campus in the paragraphs above, but the first few weeks after school started were pretty challenging too. It was my first time in a big school, first time not having to wear a uniform (13 years of Catholic school), and first time around so many white people (yes, I know I am white but I did not grow up in a white majority city and both my elementary and high schools were incredibly diverse).

It was a culture shock for me. But I had to figure it out. Fortunately I did, sorta, but not on my own. Thanks to some strange luck that includes one kid never showing up to claim his dorm room, my original roommate wanting to live with a weed smoking buddy of his, and the guy* who had a double room all to himself being generous enough to let me move in; combined with my love of sports, sports video games (specifically EA Sports’ NCAA Football ‘99) comedy, and Monday Night Raw, I was able to find a circle of amazing people, I still call friends to this day.

These guys helped make college four of the best years of my life. Sorry, that was Christine Todd Whitman’s line. Let me try again.

These guys helped make college FIVE of the best years of my life.

*The guy who had the room to himself, that’s Jeff. He’s the same friend I mentioned, but not by name, in Part 1 of my Los Angeles trilogy that let me stay on his couch when I moved out west. Thank you Jeff for taking me in when you didn’t even know me and again when you did know me. I’m not sure which was a more difficult decision, but I’m grateful for you saying yes both times.

Tim Hammill is a communications professional in the nonprofit sector. He’s turning 40 on October 20, 2020. He’s writing about the final stretch to this milestone age in 40 Days to 40, a collection of stories, thoughts, reflections and whatever else comes to mind each day. In addition to writing a blog, Tim has also decided to donate his birthday to This Is My Brave, an organization he very recently learned about that brings stories of mental illness and addiction out of the shadows and into the spotlight. If you’d like to support Tim’s birthday fundraiser, go here.

Additionally, there are three other organizations that are close to Tim’s heart: Save the Children, Stand Up To Cancer and the Bridgeport YMCA. Click on each to learn more and to support their work.