Great Expectations

Graduation was unexpectedly delightful. I expected tears to flow—as I warned anyone who would listen—but it turns out that saying goodbye, mourning/marking an ending, and moving on are unpredictable processes. To my great surprise then and now, I remember graduation, including the week before and at least a couple weeks afterwards, as being a time of almost unbroken happiness. 

Which isn’t to say that there were no tears: how could I forget the last Amnesty meeting, which signified the official ending to an experience that has brought me more friends and comfort and feelings of belonging during both good times and bad than any other part of college? Even during the last days of graduation, there were both painful and unsatisfactory goodbyes (no, actually, facebook/blogging isn’t the same thing)…

But what I really remember about my last week as an undergraduate was the time I spent with friends – happy-houring at the Heights; in Marin’s suite discussing her Derrida paper while (absurdly) curling my hair for the Senior Ball in the middle of the afternoon; cheering for Barnard during the University Commencement ceremony, in the strongest display of school spirit I’d ever been a part of; standing on my chair at the end of the ceremony singing and dancing to “Empire State of Mind.” It bugged me a little bit that I wasn’t in a Goodbye State of Mind, but I think it was for the better.

It was so awe-inspiring to hear about the honorary degree recipients, and the theme of the Barnard ceremony--we’ve worked really damn hard to get here--rang true more than I would have expected a couple years ago. It seemed particularly worth acknowledging in light of my last three weeks of school, when I barely slept more than three hours a night and went days at a time without seeing my roommate (it paid off; I’m really happy with how the semester ended).

--- Since graduation, I’ve mostly been in NYC—I’m staying on campus until the end of June, in the same building with the same roommate, even—and I’ve been so happy. Actually I’ve been a little annoyed with myself recently for bumming around more than I should and not getting stuff done, but oh well. To be expected, I guess.

Staying on campus has had the unintended side-effect (well, ok, maybe it wasn’t so unintentional originally) of letting me live in denial. I forget that I’m leaving this place that has become more of a home than I would have expected. Campus is empty-ish and it’s mine. I’m constantly expecting to see certain people I fiercely miss, but have to remind myself that the earliest chance I have to see them is late 2012. That’s a Long. Time.

During a brief visit home, I was reading a book that referenced another, more famous text I haven’t read, so naturally I turned to Professor Google, where I stumbled on a site with discussion questions and paper topics for the book. And suddenly I saw myself so clearly in Milbank, on my way to some class I was shopping where we talked about all these questions, and happy and stressed-but-it’s-fine and inspired and curious and I realized that I’ve been subconsciously expecting that mental scene to actually happen in the near future. I felt the sharpest pang of loss to realize that it is all over.

I came back to campus and it felt different for a day or two: Low steps were suddenly just a public place, and I an outsider free to wander in at any point, those Milbank hallways now an irretrievable part of the past.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)