Auburn got its name from an Oliver Goldsmith poem. Click here if you're cuious...

As a graduation present, my folks bought me a lifetime membership in the Auburn Alumni Association.

Seven years isn't long enough.

Yup, it's true. I was a student at Auburn for seven years. From September of 1990 to June of 1997, I trod the Plains from classroom to classroom with twenty thousand or so of my best friends, staying up late studying, getting tickets to football games for a mere four dollars, cursing the land of my professors' birth, and trying to hang on until the next quarter break.

You know the guy that's the campus dinosaur? You know, the one that was on campus when your older brother was here, the one that can remember when so-and-so used to water-balloon the freshman dorms, the one that remembers when XYZ hall was built, the one that, although you never really express it, you think really ought to move on with his life? That was me. Tim Perkins, senior Auburn University citizen.

What really brought my status home to me was sometime during year number six; a friend and I were talking about Auburn football and some of our favorite games, and I started talking about the Auburn-FSU game from my freshman year, about how exciting it was and about how it cemented my conversion from being a UAT fan. I ran through my whole account, making it as dramatic as possible (and let me tell you, it was dramatic), and when I finished, he said, "Oh man, I wish I had been there!" And then he kind of cocked his head, and hesitantly asked, "Now....what year are you?"

And I just sort of grinned. It was then I realized that I had become a stereotype.

Now, it's not like you think; I didn't just slack off and screw around for seven years, and then manage to limp across the stage to clutch a diploma that the administration sort of decided to give me by default. I actually graduated once during that time period, and then returned for graduate school. And I worked my tail off for those seven years--the first five studying chemical engineering, the last two working on an M.B.A. You're reading the words of one well-educated individual, here. But since I returned to my alma mater for graduate study and most of the people I knew were still in school, I didn't withdraw from campus life the way so many graduate students do. And thus, over time, to my friends I became a living fossil on the campus of Auburn University.

But to tell you the truth, I didn't mind. The more I was at Auburn, the more I grew to love it. From the day that I first set foot on campus as a nervous, wide-eyed freshman to the day I walked across the stage to receive my (second) diploma, there wasn't a day that went by when I didn't think I was living in the greatest place on earth, attending the greatest university in history. And now, six months after graduation, I miss it terribly.

And the truth is, most people I know feel that way about Auburn. Not all of course; there are always some malcontents who will be unhappy no matter what their situation. But the truth is, nearly everyone I know who has attended Auburn loves it. They continue to love it after they leave. At other schools, you ask them where they studied, and they'll tell you "I went to University of such-and-such" or, "I graduated from so-and-so college."

But you ask that question of someone who went to Auburn, and they'll tell you, "I am an Auburn man."

Present tense, not past tense; once you are an Auburn man, you are an Auburn man for life. And that's all you need to say. Five words that speak volumes, and if you don't understand, you never will. You'll never know what makes people cry "War Eagle!" when greeting each other, or how total strangers, upon learning of their shared affiliation, can converse as if they are the best of friends. The only way to know is to experience it, and the only way to experience it is to live it.

And even now, as I write this, I think back to a myriad of shared friendships and experiences, all set against the backdrop of Samford Hall and Jordan-Hare Stadium, and I think to myself, seven years wasn't nearly long enough.

War eagle.

"What is Auburn?"















The "Sam-Cam."