Four is a nice symbolic number. It's not for nothing that we speak of the "four corners of the earth", that the Bible speaks of "four horsemen" of the Apocalypse, and that, yes, college is four years long. I like to think of how an Advent wreath is circular and has four candles; the circle indicates eternity, but the four candles indicate the four Sundays during which (it is to be hoped) eternity will come into contact with time. (The intersection of time and eternity is also a big deal in T.S. Eliot's poem Four Quartets.)

Here I am in 2019, having passed three years already since I began my freshman year at Fordham; this May will mark four years since my first time at a Fordham Commencement. (Being in the University Choir, I've sung at it since I was a freshman; this year, of course, it will be my own Commencement ceremony.) The photo I've picked for this article's cover photo is a very significant one for me; the Fordham University Church has marked for me my most important spiritual and aesthetic moments, singing in choir there. The little Fordham booklet describing the University Church applies to it T.S. Eliot's words in Four Quartets describing the Incarnation: it is "the still point of [Fordham's] turning world" (Burnt Norton).

I still have a year left, and I intend to make the most out of it. Having perceived so far that Fordham represents, for me, an intersection of time and eternity (a "still point of [my] turning world"), I consider this senior year as, not an end, but a beginning, a window into a lovely eternity of time hallowed by my experiences here. (At least, that's my ideal version of Fordham.) Such, I venture to say, is the ultimate thing that one should hope for from college. During the year ahead of me, I'll keep that in mind.