A look forward, back

Could it be that the school year is over already?

It seems like only last week that senior year began. Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" had just begun its unlikely 36-week reign atop the Billboard charts. Back then, if I had told you that in January 2007, George Bush would propose and pass an amendment to make that song our national anthem, you would have thought I was crazy. But that is exactly what happened, and as promised, the beginnings of professional sports games are more entertaining for it.

Speaking of sports, who can forget that final football game of the year, when we played Dartmouth for the Ivy League title? Some of you probably think that we should have taken a knee with a one-point lead and three seconds left on the clock. Personally, I'm glad we went for it, as losing builds character.

Not as many of you noticed, but this was also a big year for my intramural broomball team, "Team Tonya Harding." After three years of mounting frustration, we finally managed a playoff "victory" when a scheduling error granted us a first-round bye. Of course we were crushed in the next round by a team of Russian grad students, but by that point, we were too overjoyed to care.

As important as these two events were, this year will be best remembered as the year the administration decided to replace teaching assistants with cyborgs. Much has been written on this topic, and I have little to add to the conversation. But let me say this: the decision to grant the cyborgs automatic tenure was ill-conceived, no matter how effective they were in the trial run. On principle, a college should not grant employment-for-life, to something which does not die. That's just not thinking ahead.

Though robots defined the school in the national media, the defining project of my past year has been my thesis. Nine months ago, I would have never guessed that my thesis research would eventually take me to a stage in faraway Sweden. You will remember the controversy that day.

"I cannot accept this Nobel Prize," I told the congregated scientists and dignitaries, "for if you check carefully, you will find that my thesis is merely a photocopy of a John Nash paper written some 50 years ago."

This was, of course, a practical joke, and if the Honor Committee had checked carefully, they would have seen this.

The last month of school has been a blur. I was as surprised as the rest of you when Hanson was announced as the headlining band for Houseparties. Of course they played "MmmBop" — it was required in their contract that they do so — but to play it as the first song of a three-hour set was, in hindsight, a tactical error.

And finally, we got to graduate. I'll be perfectly blunt and say that I was a little underwhelmed by the speakers this year. I realize that it would be unfair to expect organizers to top the Bill Clinton-David Sedaris billing from last year, but was Joe Lieberman-Pauly Shore the best that we could do? As a rule of thumb, I should never walk away from a Princeton graduation wondering if David Spade was unavailable.

The final presentation of the diplomas was fine, marred only by an unfortunate spelling error. I would ask the administration if the diplomas are proofread before distribution, and, if so, did any of the proofreaders honestly believe that "Thomas Kmight" could have been correct? It's not a big deal though, nothing that a little whiteout can't solve. Tom Knight is an economics major from San Juan Capistrano, Calif. He can be reached at ttknight@princeton.edu.