... last night's epic victory against the Tar Heels reminded me of why I'm glad to be where I am. Above is a picture I found online of the bonfire in the quad last night, after we came back from a 16-point deficit to win against our biggest rival. I never had this in high school -- there was no unity, no real sense of school spirit then.
I didn't realize until I came to college that people love to hate on Duke; when the whole powerpoint scandal broke out last semester, columnists and bloggers were still beating around that dead horse lacrosse scandal and using us as the scapegoat for what is essentially a problem on campuses all across the nation -- the alcohol-fueled hook-up culture.
Haters gonna hate, but the ones looking in from the outside are never going to understand what the school spirit is really like here. Sure, I don't drink much and I don't hook-up. But that doesn't mean I don't feel like I belong here. I watched the NCAA basketball championship game in Cameron Stadium last spring, when our team took down Butler 61-59 in Indiana to win the 2010 national title. The stadium was packed. As the buzzer went off, people were storming the court, laughing, cheering, hugging, and crying. It was unlike anything I had ever felt in my life.
There were remnants of that even last night. My friends and I were sitting on one of the couches in our common room with other students from the dorm. Most of us had books and laptops on our laps as we attempted to finish our homework while watching the game. Though the first half was ugly, things started going crazy once Seth Curry stepped up his game. Nobody was even trying to work anymore. We suddenly became this one, monstrous entity that was spread out across the campus, either packed in the student section of Cameron or crowded around common room televisions, cheering in unison. It's one thing to experience a small, personal joy; it's quite another to have that little piece of joy amplified into a collective swell of pride and exuberance.
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