Looking back on my college years, bits and pieces come back in a flurry of color and sound, a collage of a time and place in America.  My college experience took place in the turbulent 60’s.  I started college in September 1965, when the death of a president was still a sharp pain in my heart and a war I didn’t understand was taking the lives of peers, although mercifully for me, no one I knew personally.  And all around me, the drumbeat of new ideas and new freedoms sounded louder in my ears, although I could never guess at what was to come.

New ideas, new people, culture shock for a New Yorker strolling the sun-drenched campus of USC and the Southern California beaches, I reveled in it all.  While the memories still live in my heart and my brain, I wish more of them were documented in photos and documents and bits and pieces I could still touch and feel.

Today, capturing these memories has never been easier.  Inexpensive digital cameras are within almost every family’s budget, even if several family members need to pool resources.  Remind your college-bound son, daughter, niece, nephew or cousin, that these are the times of their lives they will want to remember forever.  While women are more likely to scrapbook and photograph friends; some young men might not find these activities “macho” enough, remind these young men that what happens in college may very well shape the rest of their lives and for that reason alone, they need to document the experience.

Scrapbooking may not be an interest for a college-bound man or woman but what about a Freshman Envelope, a Sophomore Envelope, a Junior Envelope and a Senior Envelope.  A brown accordian folder with a stretch cord that surrounds and holds it all together can serve as a repository for that flyer about the student demonstration, the play in which their best friend starred, that great blue book in American Lit with a big A+ written on the upper right-hand corner.  Throw it all in there and sort it out later, next year, or 10 years from now.

Digital photos with lots of captions, tagging with the name of the guy who made them laugh every time he walked into a room, the woman who said she is going to be President (maybe she is), the brooding writer whose words tear at their hearts and may someday tear at the hearts of millions.  And all the fun and strange and unique people who populate their lives during this last hurrah before they enter the real world.

This is the best of times for the best of students as they head out to discover who they are and who they want to be.  If life is a journey, rather than just a destination, then documenting the trip is worth their time and effort and will reward them with a rich tapestry to look back on in years to come.