This week marks 20 years since I graduated from UW-Madison. As I’ve been recently thinking about this, a few eloquent and philosophical questions came to my mind. 

They were: “Huh?”, “How?”, Wait, what?”, and so on.

As I started to do some math in my head, reality set in that the numbers checked out. A total of 240 months have passed by since I completed my formal education for good and tried to become a real adult. One of these days, I’ll complete that goal, too. 

I’ve been reflecting on those final college days of mine and how I felt at the time versus where I am today, thoughtfully speaking.

In the most basic of explanations, I was combinations of uncertain and hopeful, optimistic and scared, and ready to take on or conquer the world and completely and naively oblivious to how I would do such a thing.

If May 2026 Kevin could have a conversation with May 2006 Kevin, version 2006 may be mind blown at how (debatably) mature, wise, stable, and adult (?) version 2026 has become.

Mr. 2026 would cringe at how ungrounded, impulsive, and tactless the 2006 edition is, but would respect, admire, and ultimately lament the erosion of a sense of idealism, concepts of goals for the future, and childlike confidence in future accomplishments, prior to being beaten down by real life, as everyone naturally goes through in their own ways. 

How far we go in life, both in direction forward and distance from what we leave behind as it gets further and further away.

Then and then alone

My distracted-by-the-past thoughts turned a special emphasis toward what was the highlight of my four years as an active Badger — my time at WSUM, the “college radio” station at UW-Madison.

I was there for two years and was never paid a dime for all of the time I put in first as a news reporter, later the news director, and also one semester as an overnight DJ for one hour a week just “for fun.”

Compared to everything I’ve allegedly accomplished in my nearly 20-year professional career since that time, there was nothing quite like it. 

During that time, I had enough “wisdom” to know that every time I opened the big metal door located on the second floor of a building on State St., I might never experience something like this again.

Whether it was the unique blend of people I would meet and work with semester after semester, the experiences I would have, both learning how to be a journalist and sharing with others on my staff what I knew, or the childlike excitement (mostly restrained) of “Hey! I’m on the radio!” whenever I could push the magic buttons and the microphone would work, it was a powerful time that I was blessed with as I bushwhacked my way through that awkward age of growing up.

But like everything, it didn’t last forever.

Come May of 2006, no longer would I try to out-scoop the Daily Cardinal or Badger Herald (campus-related newspapers) on a story. No longer would I feel the rookie overwhelmedness of interviewing celebrities and wondering why these people want to talk to me. No longer would I have cab drivers calling the studio line at 2:30 a.m. and telling me they enjoyed the music I was playing at that hour. 

I knew and had a desire for bigger and better things to come. Even though I knew my days at WSUM would never be replicated (as best as I could mentally muster at the time), it would take a while to fully know the reality of leaving a special time behind.

Time is temporary

We all have left multiple pasts behind us, from childhood to teenage years to college-aged years, to other life steps beyond those. 

As the world becomes more complicated and technological, I see many people of all ages on social media reflecting and reminiscing on days of youth and how much better and simpler they were (ironically using complicated technology to articulate these points to like-minded people).

Anecdotally, I’ve read about or seen interviews with people who served in the military, not necessarily 100 percent missing their oft-dangerous war experiences, but missing a time when they felt useful and were living to their fullest potential.

Upon coming home, they had to adjust to “normal life” and accept the fact that, for better or worse, nothing would replicate that very unique and active time in their lives.

All they, we, you, I can do is the best we can with what we’ve got.

It may seem enticing to chase a new life path to feel like we did in our 20s, but for those of us who aren’t in our 20s anymore, we can’t possibly feel the way we did ever again.

The challenge is to feel as our best selves, as we are meant to, whether we are 22, 32, 42, 52, 62, or so on.

Our humanity won’t let us not miss the past, but our humanity also always demands that we keep living forward.

I can miss glancing out the window, seconds before I’m to deliver a Friday at 6 p.m. radio news update, as a weekend in Madison is about to begin down on the street below, but I can also know that was then and this is now.

It’s up to me to find the 2026 version of that. Maybe it’s not as exciting or fun, but it can be just as productive or useful.

Where have you come from and where are you going? 

What do you miss from the past that you wish you could go back to? How can you use those feelings to build your present and your future?

As much as I miss saying, “For WSUM News, I’m Kevin Wondrash,” I know right now, the most important thing I have to say is . . . 

Thank you for reading.

I’m praying for you.