For my first three years of college, my social circle was mostly defined by my participation in the campus theater club. I have many fond memories of shows I did with the club, and I am still friends with most of the people I befriended through it, even some who graduated before I arrived.

For various reasons I've distanced myself from the organization this year. This hasn't necessarily been a bad thing - I feel a lot less stressed out in general, and it hasn't destroyed my social life or anything.

Lately there's been some discussion on the organization's electronic bulletin boards about the "future" of the organization, started by the vice-president and resident politician.

I'm realizing there isn't as much distance as I thought there was, at least on some visceral level. I'm getting angry as I sit here reading posts by idealistic sophomores offering suggestions for recruiting new members (all of which have been tried and failed several times already), and saying we all need to be more like the organization's president (who is personally responsible for having driven away at least four experienced members).

I think I've successfully managed to stop caring about what happens to the organization after I leave. But I can't stand to see that the lessons learned by those who went through the organization around the same time as me are already being forgotten before we've even left.