Denouement

I woke up this morning and I can just feel that everything has changed.

I'm sitting here in my room, in the building I've lived in for the past 5 years, in this community I've surrounded myself with, in this neighborhood I know like the back of my hand, and I'm listening to the familiar sound of the traffic outside and the lawnmowers on the plaza - and I know that I'm no longer a part of it really, I'm on my way out.

Next year these halls will be filled again and I won't be walking them. It's weird to look at everything that way. I was walking down them last night, it was getting later, they were almost empty, and it all just hit me.

When I think back to how I felt when I first arrived here, and how familiar this whole college life has become, it really moves me.

These five years have just been so...I don't know...huge, I guess, in a lot of ways. Leaving home for the first time, keeping an apartment, cooking, staying up all night with your friends, grocery shopping, stumbling down 9th Ave on the weekends and dreading class come monday, strolling over to the park for the afternoon. Everything was so close, so easy, so if-you-feel-like-it.

My life won't be much like that anymore. Now the work begins. Which means things can really happen for once. But you know, it's different. No longer in that cozy college bubble. No advisors to run to, professors to bargain with.

I just want to be able to relax and enjoy these last couple of weeks. Sit out on the plaza in the sunshine. Soak up what's left of my college years. My college years. GOD that is so weird, weird, weird that they're over. I just can't believe I'm 23 and graduating from college. When did this happen? I still feel like I'm in 7th grade most of the time.

Alright. Enough talk. Action.

I'm gonna make pancakes. You see? Taking the initiative!