Picture the Plex dining hall during lunchtime on a Monday. It’s the one hour when most people are on their lunch break, there’s a long line for Plexican burritos and all sorts of people are dispersed around the room in groups of two, maybe three people.

It’s a classic sight during the school year. Fall, winter or spring, this is what you expect to see. The room is monotonic – full of people who are stuck in a steady and unchanging routine, full of the concerns and problems of last week and full of the looming realities of what the next week might bring.

So often, the picture of Foster-Walker Complex at lunchtime reflects the mindset of the upperclassmen in it: continuous, calm, composed, calculated. We almost always seem to have an idea about the things that we will run into in the coming days, so we set our mindsets accordingly.

We live with a sense of complacency: We’ve settled into life at this school and we don’t expect anything more than what we get. We live in a bubble and accept that this is what the school will bring, and nothing more.

This complacency stifles creativity. Because we accept that what we have on campus is all that we will get, we don’t move to make new things. We’ve come to terms with the fact that this is what makes Northwestern the way it is, and we don’t need much else.

Were we always like this?

Go back a bit further than the beginning of your freshman year, to the beginning of your first trip to NU. Remember your feelings at the airport, the bus station or the backseat of your car, while on your way to a new destination, a new adventure! Even if you weren’t feeling particularly excited, you must have thought about all the new possibilities that come with starting a new chapter in your life. This was to be the first step to adulthood, a taste of independence that could lead to so many new things.

That mindset was the exact opposite of complacency – it was a mentality that let us start our college lives with a positive outlook that was bright and energetic.

Right now, the new freshmen are starting their college lives with this mentality. They are curious, energetic, lively and looking forward to enjoying this year. They are full of cautious optimism, a sense of adventure even, having come to a new place full of new people. In a new environment, they act boldly in every step they take outside their comfort zones.

The best thing about this boldness the freshmen currently have is that it’s contagious. It rubs off on everyone who interacts with it and gives them some of that cautious optimism. It gives them some of that sense of adventure.

And here’s some good news for you: There are more 2,000 people on campus with that mentality right now. This class of freshmen has the ability to rejuvenate the lost sense of energy and adventure in anyone they meet.

In upperclassmen minds, there’s a stigma about how freshmen are the newest kids on the block, how they have a lot to learn. But even the newest ones on the block can teach the rest some new things. In this case, freshmen can show us how to recover the mentality that made this place so great when we first started.

Yoni Pinto is a Weinberg sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you want to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].