Graduation

I just finished the last of my schoolwork at Wellesley College. Yes, it is over. I am incapable of understanding or grasping this fact of life. My heart somehow won’t let me.

Wordsworth said that “there are some moments in time worth ages.” Today as I walked home from the library, I had one such age-worthy moments. Perfect swirling sparkling snow danced around me as I slowly and carefully walked on the well-worn paths of my college experience, music in my ears, blood at the end of my veins, blushed cheeks and warm insides. This is my home, my soul sang.

I am realizing, with joy, that it is exquisitely heart wrenching to leave this home. Wellesley is so weird and so wonderful. I have learned things here that I could have learned nowhere else. There was a part of me here even before I came three and a half years ago. Despite all the hardship and the musings of regret that inundate my thoughts in these last days, I am proud to say that I think I have found that part of myself. And she’s beautiful.

Even more than finding myself, I have figured out what kind of self I want to find and realized that I will be finding that self day by day forever… it doesn’t happen all at once.

It’s the end of an era. At life-changing turns in life, we are always forced to wonder how we did. Was my Wellesley and college experience all it could be, all I could make it? No, not really at all. But I know it was spectacular in its own right, and I know that as I continue to grow up, I will see more and more clearly and eternally why I was here and what I have learned and what I have contributed.

How did I get to this place in time? Yesterday I was crying my guts out because high school was over. Now, college?? James Taylor said, “the thing about time is that time isn’t really real.” Truth.

I happy to report that finals were enjoyable and satisfying. I learned a lot, I worked pretty hard, and then I handed it all in. It's over. And I feel at peace tonight in this little dorm room with my twinkle lights and my beating heart.

P.s. Yes - the above pictures were taken with self-timer. In my room at 12am. As soon as I emailed in my last paper, I put on my cap and gown and had some fun with my camera in triumph, delight and elation. Do you like my candy cane pajamas?