University of Dayton - MyLife

Oregon Outing

Last week, the annual "Senior Salute" took place, an event sponsored by SGA to give the seniors a chance to go down to the Oregon District in downtown Dayton and experience the nightlife. In the past, this event has taken place in April, right before the seniors graduate, but for various reasons, it was moved to October in order to give us seniors a chance to see what the Oregon District is all about much earlier in the school year. Because of this, the name was changed to "Oregon Outing." They held it on a Thursday night, that way the bars weren't as crowded with "normal" people, so the UD seniors arrived downtown and sort of took over the place. Each place had many different drink specials and live bands, just for UD students. It was a great collaboration among both the university and the city of Dayton in order to give our class a really great senior experience. Buses shuttled us downtown between 8 and 9:30 and came to pick us between 11 and 12:30 that night. Needless to say, we all had a blast. Most people collaborated with their housemates and friends to create matching t-shirts with fun slogans and just about every senior I knew went. It was one of those things that no one wanted to miss out on because of the legacy senior salute has had for us in the past. As we've seen previous senior classes participate in their "salutes" for the past three years, finally it was our turn to experience what everyone in the past had raved about, so we weren't about to miss out on it.

Participating in this was fun, but it definitely gave my housemates and me another reason to get a little sad about being seniors. It's one more event crossed off the list, and one step closer to graduation. I think we've begun to accept this fact much more gracefully now than we did at the beginning of the year, and even though those little "graduation anxiety attacks" creep up on us every now and then, I think we're managing to cope with the reality of actually being a senior. As long as we keep in mind the famous phrase, "I get by with a little help from my friends," we should be just fine.

Oct 22, 2008 5:34 PM Permalink