40 Years A Freshman

In 1974, I moved from Southern New Jersey to Washington, D.C. on this date.
I grew up a "poor hick from the sticks."
No air conditioning there. We had trees and fans.
I was a freshman at Georgetown University, the Nation's Oldest Jesuit University, founded in 1789, the year our federal government opened.
I now live in St. Augustine, the Nation's Oldest City, founded by Roman Catholics on September 8, 1565.
I remember years later telling a former Congressman, Jesuit Fr. Robert S. Drinan, S.J. of the experience, living in New North Hall at Georgetown University, while standing in the doorway of the Jesuit Residence there.
Fr. Drinan said, without missing a beat, "I bet they ripped you off."
Fr. Drinan was right, at least in one sense.
No air conditioning there, either (and something like $1200/school year in 1974 dollars, if I recall correctly).
Yes, room, board and tuition were high, but so were the spirits, and the expectations and the standards (and many of the people).
I still feel like a freshman much of the time, not unlike one of my former clients, the late C.D. "Bud" Varnadore of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who once said of our co-counsel, that he was "like a 'possum" -- "every day, I wake up in a new world."
We're still making this a "new world."
"Welcome to the New World," as Jack Ryan, the Georgetown-educated character says near the end of the movie of Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October.