Holy mother of crap. I’m done. At 6:19 pm, I turned in my final assignment as an undergraduate student. I’m done. Joe wrote an awesome post about the last day of class, and while he perfectly captured the mind-bending nature of the “final undergraduate class,” as well as the general feeling during the spring of senior year, the last assignment was much more unnerving for me. It’s so...final. Clearly my vocabulary has deserted me.
I spent the last four months, if not the last year, waiting for this moment. Graduation is fun, for sure, and I can’t wait to wear the goofy cap and gown (seriously, who designed those caps, they make no functional sense) and be smothered by my loving family, but that’s not the end. The end is NOW. Since my first admission to graduate school, I’ve been ready to run off to something new, and once I picked UCLA for my Master of Public Health in Epidemiology, I immediately began researching all the fun and interesting things I could do in LA. I almost immediately stopped, because there are really far too many to catalogue.
But now that it’s time, that I’m shipping stuff home and giving away what’s too cheap or big to mail, and hearing from my grandparents how excited they are to see me, I’ve begun to realize all the things I’ll miss. I had dinner with four of my very best friends, with whom I lived two years ago and last summer. They’re all staying in or near Boston. I’m going to be 3,000 miles away. I know all the best restaurants, where to order food at 11 pm on a weeknight, where to take awesome fitness classes and shop for funky novelties. I love Boston, Davis Square, and Tufts. I am getting a little stir-crazy, and I’m certainly excited to begin the next phase, but the leaving is bittersweet.
I haven’t quite resolved my feelings.
Considering that I only truly finished college 6 hours ago, it might be a bit early to expect acceptance. Give me a few days. I’ll visit with friends, mail my boxes, eat at all the places I haven’t yet made time for, and morosely wander around Boston, and maybe, possibly, by the time I leave, I’ll be ready.