"Hold on to college as long as you can!"
"It's going to fly by, stay in school forever."
"These are the best years of your life, cling to them!"
These are all things I've heard for the last 4 years, and the speakers have gotten progressively more aggressive as I near graduation in exactly one week. What do I say to these beacons of hope and wisdom?
Oh don't worry, I'm killing myself as soon as the graduation party ends.
What do they want me to say? Should I take their advice and take on a 5th, 6th, 7th year and graduate an embittered 25 year old with $300,000 in debt and 5 degrees in increasingly useless fields (I hear Underwater Basket-weaving has a burgeoning market)? While the above response is a joke (in poor taste and completely satisfying), it's not far off. Is college the peak of my life? Is there nothing to look forward to? I guess I can kill all my friends, too, as a final act of kindness to them.
The greatest lesson I learned in college is to recognize when it is time to move on.
I have fallen in love with people and places. I've lived alone and I've lived among friends, I've explored every facet of myself, both drunk and sober. I know things. I know who I am and I know that I will change as life kicks the shit out of me and glues me back together again. I know what it feels like to go to work still fighting the night before. I know what it is to be heartbroken and I know what it is to be completely paralyzed; first by absolute joy and then by the fear of losing it. I've lived abroad, lived with people I've loved and people I've hated, I've been scarred and loved and laughed at. I've known regret. I karaoke'd in my pajamas, I danced on the 3rd Street Promenade, and I dove into the ocean half naked. I've said "hello" and "goodbye" in equal measure (with the occasional "Come here often?" thrown in) and I have watched the days on my calendar slip by with bittersweet sadness.
I have spent weekends which, though they fade like photographs over time, will forever be tacked on my wall to remind me that I'm still living; memories will not stop once I turn that tassel over to the left side of my graduation cap. I have shared so much of myself that I am spread, however thin and however faint, over the walls and grass and desks of this campus and hopefully reside somewhere in the minds of a few of those passing souls I may or may not remember.
Weekends in Vegas, nights at Thompkins and POW's, days at the beach, afternoons in the Einstein Kaffe, and the familiar drifting breeze from the neighboring ocean are mine, and they'll forever stay that way. The things I have lost I will find again, including heartache and joy, friendship and inspiration.
The tangible feeling of moments shedding away from my time here has defined my last few days, but it will not define my future; I know it is time to move on. The people and circumstances which have made my college life memorable and valuable are not static, they change with me and we will all move on together. I look forward the day we will meet again, beaten and aged but not broken, smiling at the ways life has failed to defeat us.
My life will forever be an adventure, and my greatest challenge will be knowing which paths to choose and when. I will live bravely and I will get hurt; but I will not die after graduation. I will love and I will lose and I will laugh in endless succession. I say this, of course, with a friendly reminder to Fate that killing me on May 9, while ironic, would just be a major dick move.
Next Saturday I will mourn the life I am moving away from with the nostalgia of a child who moves from her first home. Though I am leaving behind the walls in which I've lived my life for so long, there is so much more ahead of me which I cannot fathom. I never want to say my best days are behind me.
On May 8, I will carry these 4 years with me but I will not let them weigh me down. Life is starting over again, and I can't wait.
Alles liebe,
Jess
