By Noah Liff ’11, Special Alumni Contributer

My nightly routine for the past four years at Newark Academy has been relatively simple to reconstruct: around 1:00AM I head to the kitchen, pour myself a bowl of Rice Krispies, flip on the TV and finish up any leftover work.

As I flipped through pages of French notes and finished my coveted remaining scoops of cereal the night before my final IB exam, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder flashed across the TV. Championed as the bastion of politically incorrect college debauchery, Van Wilder has come to represent all things wrong with modern higher education, from rampant underage drinking to countless illicit activities. Interestingly enough, it was Ryan Reynolds and his portrayal of the stereotypical American “frat-boy” that induced this tear-jerking summation to my time as a high-school student.

For those of you who haven’t experienced this paragon of early 21^st century comedy, Van continuously focuses on wooing a fellow student’s girlfriend, choosing to ignore his academic endeavors in lieu of his social agenda. As the two recount college experiences and what the future entails, Van remarks that “If you’re always thinking about the future, then you kind of forget about the present.” Now, having wholeheartedly focused on the brash and unadulterated humor that is Van Wilder, I heard this and looked up, shocked. Nowhere amidst the partying and social immorality that Van embodied did I expect such a philosophical maxim. And I, admittedly rather sentimental as my high-school career eerily came to a close, quickly tensed up and became teary-eyed.

So I took Van’s adage at face value and began remarking on the past four years at Newark Academy. I began questioning if I was too focused on the future and what I wanted to accomplish. Did I lose track of the experience of growing up and enjoying the time I had? Was I having fun, in the most basic sense of the term? Looming ahead was always the doom of college applications, AP/IB exams and the stress of balancing a social life with demanding coursework as we moved through NA. Still, my friends and I always managed (or at least, seemed) to enjoy the present, the experience of getting older with each other and finding joy where school met athletics, extracurricular activities and weekends. We all had aspirations, we all had goals; those goals, though, could not and would not manifest themselves without taking pleasure in the experience of going through it together. We all failed a test, handed in an essay late, missed a night of sleep to finish a lab: it’s the undocumented rite of passage each of us took part in that matured us. And that’s where I broke down. It was never just me, it was always us.

Maybe that’s what was best about my time at Newark Academy: that I’ve developed a sense of community and belonging that I’ve never felt before. I can walk into every office in the school and feel perfectly comfortable and welcome to initiate an hour-long conversation. It’s a place you can call home. There were times during the week, in fact, when I literally spent more time at NA than I did at home, making the proverbial “home away from home” a fitting and realistic mantra.

NA was, still is, and always will be, a place of refuge and source of inspiration and motivation. It instilled in us a sense of purpose, a drive to push the boundaries of traditional educational limits and actively seek answers to our own intellectual drives. Our teachers became friends, mentors, and family. Our community became one. We opened our minds, hearts and homes to each and every member of the NA community and embraced the passion and commitment to intellectual betterment, not just as students but as active individuals as well.

So to the rising seniors, and the rest of the Newark Academy community, we bid you adieu. If I were to leave you one piece of advice, it would be to think about the single classy and politically-correct axiom of the great Van Wilder as you progress into your final stages at NA: if you focus too heavily on the future, you may miss the present. It has been said before, but I’ll say it again: Yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present. Enjoy it while it lasts, the memory will never live up to the experience itself.