2007: The year I graduate from college, the year I have been anticipating since fifth grade - it is finally here.

My years in the shadows of the ivory towers have been the most transformative I have yet to experience, as they are for most of us. Now, as I part with the banks of the Red Cedar River, I find myself mourning my childhood.

I am an adult and that is not an easy concept for me to accept. I feel as though it kind of snuck up on me, like the proverbial thief in the night. Thus, I am inspired to reflect on times past while anxiously anticipating what awaits.

Our generation, whatever it's called now, has been told we are the most important and are in the best position to influence our world. This is true of every generation. Every generation has its sinners and saints, its pimps and its pushers, and its best and brightest.

Ours is no different.

The tide of troubles waxes and wanes with each person clinging to their piece of debris, drowning in a sea of ignorance. There are sweet and sour moments and certainly the world progresses forth, continuously changing. Inspiring awe at our leaps toward a flatter and more dynamic Earth, yet instilling fear of those who would use such technologies to kill in the name of divine will or maximize profits at the price of poverty.

We are the 9/11 generation. Along with the steel and concrete, our naivety and stupor came crashing down on that calm September morn. President Bush is right that we are now participants in a long and difficult battle we did not choose, but he is dreadfully wrong in arrogantly assuming the only weapons to fight that battle are forged in a furnace and not in our minds.

Others our age are dying half a world away in the name of security and liberty. Their valor ought not be frivolously appreciated, as the cost of war haunts us all.

The clashes of civilizations that populate the 24-hour news channels flood our psyche with an anxiety that impels urgency, yet induces no immediate resolution.

Iraq, Iran, North Korea, nuclear missiles, smallpox, anthrax, ricin, al-Qaida, dirty bombs, chemical attacks, hijacks, jihad, weapons of mass destruction, homeland security, terrorism - this is our vocabulary. These are our challenges.

Our intellectual pursuits lead us to examine these ordeals and to form conjectures concerning their causes and cessation.

Many times after a research paper or heated debate, I often find serenity in a beautiful sunset or a walk through the woods.

Nature provides us with a vital bond to our history and a concrete reminder of our humanity.

Understanding that we are a part of a greater whole is a reality humans begin grasping at childhood, and throughout our evolution we have gained greater and greater insight.

I am my mother's child, my family's relative, my community's participant, my generation's contributor, my nation's citizen, my society's heir, my species' member, my ecosystem's predator and prey, my world's inhabitant and a part of the universe so vast as to evade conception.

It is becoming evermore apparent the oil we burn and the waste we produce has turned what was once a source of comfort into a matter of grave concern. It will be our decisions that induce or reduce the pressures on our environment - will we be stewards or scavengers?

The future is indeed wrought with numerous trials and tribulations. There are those who are fanatically bent on the destruction of our very civilization and even more unnerving, we all seem willfully complacent in the destruction of our only home, our blue planet.

So here we are, young and idealistic, this is our time, these are our burdens, let's get to work. Frederick Douglass once proclaimed, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning."

We will fail, we will even make some things worse, but we just might make a few things better and if we do all this and still remember to love one another, then we may be as important a generation as they tell us.

Paul B.A. Holland is a political science senior and State News columnist. Reach him at holla103@msu.edu.