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| Photo c/o Michelle Bongirno |
We are a band of misfits. Some of us contemplating medical school and the daunting days it has in store with an exhausted body and soul. Some of us hold the unknown between our fingertips as we grasp the stacks and stacks of job applications, all of which make us feel uneasy, under qualified, and some what worthless. Some of us are just trying to hang on till graduation, because our minds and souls are wrung out and stretched too thin to think about anything else.
We are all charting waters and setting out onto paths for the first time, perhaps really for the first time in our young twenty-something lives, we set out alone. The routines and the rhythms we've known for 16+ years don't apply anymore and we must begin anew, like never before.
Beginning college wasn't the same as high school or middle school or elementary school, but it held the same sorts of principles that made the transition easier and more understandable. Yet, this time, the path isn't set and the variables are unlimited. While this transition is exciting and fresh, its scary and leaves us lying awake at night contemplating even the slightest bends and curves in the road.
So when you ask a college student a little under 2 weeks away from graduation if they are excited, please don't expect us to be elated or jumping for joy. We're wrung out, practically terrified, and having serious thoughts of running away. It's just the truth.
We will pull ourselves up by our bootstraps by the time we have to glide across the stage wearing funny hats and robes, but in the mean time, be patient with us. We ARE excited. We ARE looking forward to the fresh and the new. BUT. We are exhausted. And the light at the end of the tunnel is so close, its no longer at the end but blaring. We are blinded by the impending reality that is graduating from college.
We're sad too. Sometimes that's even hard for us to fully grasp or admit.
We've grown roots and become attached to the people and places, the sights and the smells. Basement offices have become our second homes and tucked away cozy corners of the library are our safe spaces. We know quite well the hum of the classrooms and the people who inhabit them. We choke up as professors, who pushed us and taught us more than just textbooks, hug us and tell us they wish us best. We're sentimental over the simplest card games, because the reality is we will most likely never be squished around the table with these people, our people, again. The idea of leaving this "home" and whispering those goodbyes make our hearts ache in ways we never expected.
Life is sending us on. Its beautiful and hard, but worth it just the same.
We are all going to seek a great perhaps, yet in these last few days let us live in the now.
11 days.
We're sad too. Sometimes that's even hard for us to fully grasp or admit.
We've grown roots and become attached to the people and places, the sights and the smells. Basement offices have become our second homes and tucked away cozy corners of the library are our safe spaces. We know quite well the hum of the classrooms and the people who inhabit them. We choke up as professors, who pushed us and taught us more than just textbooks, hug us and tell us they wish us best. We're sentimental over the simplest card games, because the reality is we will most likely never be squished around the table with these people, our people, again. The idea of leaving this "home" and whispering those goodbyes make our hearts ache in ways we never expected.
Life is sending us on. Its beautiful and hard, but worth it just the same.
We are all going to seek a great perhaps, yet in these last few days let us live in the now.
11 days.
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