Hurray for the east coast. I have had delicious pizza and bagels and thus life is good.

In my last days in Chicago, I managed to have some fun. I had a drink at the Lounge in the John Hancock building. I jumped in Lake Michigan with all my clothes on. I met up with Adrienne for lunch. Adrienne is a high school acquintence of mine whom I’ve known via Onstage tech and decathlon. Adrienne is one of those people whom I’ve always wished I got to know better.

Final thoughts on MAPSS?

Well, it wasn’t the worst way to spend 9 months.

Scene: Chris, trying to convince me that my thesis is not a failure.
Me: Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’ll say it again ‘An MA in 9 months is way more productive than getting knocked up’
Chris: Yeah that only takes a day. Or like, 10 minutes!

Well, I did get a boyfriend this year, so at least I’ve accomplished something
-Sarah

I am not qualified for any job my MA could get me
-Eric

Who is this “Chad” person?
-someone’s thesis advisor

What’s wrong with the people in your program? They always look so depressed
-CIR person

I don’t know anyone who’s said ‘MAPSS was a great experience! I’m so glad I came!’
-the conclusion of last week’s conversation

Damnit, I should have done CIR!
-me

MAPSS lies
-the general consensus

Much as I feel I have earned the right to wear ugly regalia I am very much not looking forward to the ceremony this afternoon. It diesn’t start until 2:30, but we have to line up an hour early. And my parents being here tends to stress me out.

And I forgot to pay my rent this month, so now its late, and I have to pay a fee.Oops. 

I also spent a great deal of money I don’t really have on clothes I desperately need (I owned two tanks tops. I needed summer clothes) and I still haven’t gotten job interview-y clothes. I was wondering why my black Express pants were so ratty and than realized it was probably because they’re nearly three years old. 

In two weeks I will be back on the East Coast

I put in my degree application today. It’s also March 8th, meaning graduation is in exactly 3 months.

Other than that, I got nothing. The only subject I can talk about is all my final papers, and progress (or non-progress) I’m making on said final papers.

Oh, and Hans Blix is speaking here today, so I’m going to go see him. It may be relevant to my thesis. And there may be free food.

Graduation/Birthday Weekend Recap

-got to Saratoga Thursday night
-was still in my work clothes. Sebastian commented that I looked great, so thus I proved to him that I do indeed “rock” a suit and heels. We went to Scotty’s. We talked and caught up.
-Sebastian and I are both nostalgic, so I’m allowed to be maudlin
-Back to Fain C, conversation with Leah, a little drinking, some writing, 
-picking up honors tassels, visiting a non-gov’t professor, hanging out in the gov’t dept lounge writing job applications
-sitting on a bench with Sebastian, being told by him “Yeah, but you’re more a Portia, then a Miranda.” Laughing hysterically at this comparison – Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom indeed
-Gov’t Dept Reception with the parents: hearing my professors say wonderful things about me, talking with my two favorite professors for over an hour, being told by my favorite professor that I am “glowing”
-talking about grad school programs with gov’t professors who assure me I will get in, and I will get funded, and I will be an attractive PhD candidate
-being owed a beer
-The department chair telling me he cited my paper in a presentation he gave. I AM A FOOTNOTE
-dinner with my parents: they’re proud of me!
-out with Xina for a beer at DA’s – this is becoming tradition
-another drive-by, for old time’s sake, without Escape playing
-hugging Xina good-bye at the end of the night
-babbling until 3 AM on AIM about how awesome everything is
-picking up Xina for graduation, a little music, a little freaking out
-having Matt fix our hoods
-transfer girl picture
-walking at graduation, with Xina, who has been with me since Day One at Skidmore College
-some speech at graduation made me cry, I don’t remember which one now, but it was something about how you will have lows, and you will have pain, and you will have times where nothing goes right, but it is up to you to change that
-wearing my honors tassels, and my pi sigma alpha cord
-walking with all the transfer girls
-pics with all the transfer girls
-saying “3.5” every time someone said “four years” with Xina
-graduating with Kristen, who I have known for EIGHTEEN years
-hugging a seemingly non-huggable professor as we recessed at graduation
-getting a hug from Sebastian: “I’ll conform to your country’s etiquette”
-phone call from favorite professor
-hilarious card from younger, wiser, sibling
-getting to SLEEP
-driving home, relevant lyrics
-birthday dinner with Xina
-writing “You are hot!!!”
 -Birthday drinks with Xina and Michael
-Singing Eve 6
-floor sitting

And so here I am again. It is amazing how incredibly right I feel in this little room in Fain C. But I will save that for tomorrow night.

“I always get nostalgic this time of year,” Sebastian remarked as we drove back to campus this evening. (An “omg, me too” moment) “Endings are just so sad.”

I dropped him off in Case parking lot. There was a boy and a girl sitting in a car with the doors open. I like to imagine they were having one of those conversations you have with a friend on a May evening, where you express your disbelief that the end is so close. Everyone I see wears the same expression, and it is one I am grateful not to have had the chance to don. I am already maudlin enough by nature – I don’t think I could handle an end like this if I’d actually had the type of the experience that prompted that conversation held in the white old-school Volvo in Case Parking lot.

Everything I love from Skidmore will be easily held on to. Anything I want to keep, I will — this I know. Unlike high school, there is no “familiarity” which I will miss when it is gone — I haven’t yet, anyway. There are things that I will not miss until I am reminded of them, like the wash of mood that overtakes me walking around campus on a perfect spring evening, or the corners of Ladd Hall, or the curve of the perimeter road, but most of that is merely sentimentalist.

And I will miss this little room in Fain C, because when I have come back to this room and dropped an armload of stuff on the bed, I have felt home.

Some things

–I am bored. I just got back from lunch and I know the afternoon is going to be endless. I’m tired and I’m convinced my hair still smells like smoke even though I showered when I got home from last night.

–Because I go out on Thursday nights now. Because I am acting like a college student.

–I have to do laundry when I get home because my smoke-infused clothes infected the rest of my clothes. I have nothing to say.

–And it’s Friday the 13^th! Happy Friday the 13^th! I should rent Part VI tonight – it is my favorite, favorite Jason movie.

–I need to get a dress for graduation. I need to find one of the three dresses in the world that de-emphazies my freakish hips. I hate dresses, and I hate dress shopping.

So I Sent Out Variations of This Email Yesterday:

Subject: As A Woman I Reserve the Right To Change My Mind

After months and months of saying I wasn’t going to go to my graduation (and having lots of good reasons to back it up) I’ve decided to attend. I mostly didn’t want to go because I had such a bad college experience that seeing a celebration of “OMG, the BEST FOUR YEARS of our lives” would just depress me. But I just decided, screw everyone else who made me feel like that. The last two months of college were the best for me, I got A’s from my two favorite,  professors, and I deserve to celebrate it however I want. I will probably regret this somewhere in the middle of the insanely long ceremony, but I’m still going.

So I’ll see you all at commencement. I’ll be the one in cap and gown.

-Rachel

And Got Quite A Response

After playing phone tag, I finally got Hampshire Mike on the phone. “You sound so happy,” he remarked. “and a little bit Valley girl“

“The Pioneer Valley?” I asked innocently and then gave him the Cliffnotes version of what’s making me cheerful enough to sound like a total ditz on the phone.

I think it’s safe to say there are a few things putting a smile on my face lately…

Tuesday Just Might Go My Way

Firstly:

May 11 has become irrelevant. The real challenge is getting to my would-be graduation date without regressing and irrationally freaking out. I will possibly go the Hampshire and ring the Div Free bell, and totally cry. It’s unlikely I will go to Saratoga, because anyone I care about seeing isn’t graduating, and I can see them this summer. Would-be graduation is May 21. Thus, 33 days. Yay, countdowns.

Secondly.

I only listen to music in my car. Obviously, I have certain songs that I associate with certain times of year, or specific memories. (ok, I have a LOT of those, because I have an eidetic memory, and listen to music almost solely for lyrics.) But I also associate certain songs with certain roads. Flagpole Sitta’? Colonial Road going towards Wayne on summer nights, 2000. Brilliant Disguise? Driving south on Route 9 just before exit 13, where the pieces of the old billboard always look like the lights of a cop car from far away, last March. All For Leyna? Route 116 towards Holyoke, going to that random coffee shop there, the Monday night after I decided I was transferring.

My brain needs to be submitted for some kind of study; it’s not normal to have this vivid a memory.

Also, it is Monday, and I am in a good mood. I really am the only person on the planet who doesn’t hate Mondays. Clearly, I’m also at work right now. I think I love my life.

BACHELOR OF ARTS
OK COMPLETE 120 HOURS AND THE SENIOR RESIDENCY
OK A CUM GPA OF 2.0 IN ALL SKIDMORE WORK IS REQUIRED
OK FOUNDATION REQUIREMENTS
OK INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY REQUIREMENT – Liberal Studies 1
OK INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY REQUIREMENT – Liberal Studies 2
OK ALL FOUR BREADTH REQUIREMENTS HAVE BEEN SATISFIED.
OK CULTURE-CENTERED INQUIRY REQUIREMENTS-PART 1:
Complete 1 FOREIGN LANGUAGE course.
OK CULTURE-CENTERED INQUIRY REQUIREMENTS-PART 2:
Complete either 1 NON-WESTERN CULTURE OR 1
CULTURAL DIVERSITY course.
OK LIBERAL ARTS REQUIREMENT
OK Complete 24 hrs at 300 level (Parts I and II below):
OK PART I: 12 OF THESE 24 HOURS MAY BE TAKEN ANYTIME AT
SKIDMORE (or be approved as Maturity Level credit from a
study abroad program).
OK PART II: 12 OF THESE 24 HOURS MUST BE TAKEN IN THE
SR. YEAR AT SKIDMORE (Senior Year begins after 90 hours
are completed)
OK MAJOR REQUIREMENTS FOR GOVERNMENT
OK MAJOR GPA FOR GOVERNMENT MUST BE A MINIMUM OF 2.000
This major GPA includes all Government courses and GH322
ADDITIONAL ELECTIVE COURSES
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
ALL REQUIREMENTS HAVE BEEN MET

I am officially, bureaucratically, no-give-backs, graduated.

An “I’m Home” Entry

I got back to Jersey on Wednesday. I drove Sebastian to the airport on Wednesday morning, so I had someone to listen to me repeat “This is so weird. I’m leaving Skidmore. This is so weird.” The drive to Albany was very interesting and involved having to stop so I could put air in my tires (in the cold, while Sebastian sat in the car in his suit, (…so much for aristocratic treatment of women!), how Hobbes would approve of Cosmopolitan magazine, some frank advice from Sebastian for me (…well, you really shouldn’t, but it’s Christmas, so…), and relating Machiavelli to almost everything.

I hadn’t been very emotional beyond being in shock. I spent about five hours on Tuesday night on the phone with various people, being ridiculously happy. And then I completely lost it while driving away from Albany airport, because I was playing my “You Cannot Be Depressed Listening to This Mix” and apparently the song “I’m Movin’ On” when combined with actually ‘moving on’, and saying temporary good-byes to friends will make me cry. I am so maudlin. This is all very strange to me.

I sobbed until I hit the Thruway and then it was a very easy drive. I still haven’t unpacked, I’m back at B&N (and my new staff is amazing and I’m actually really happy to be back there), and I’m still in a good mood.

Dar Williams totally wrote “Better Things” for me, for December 2004

I spent Sunday being incredibly social, especially if one is to count the post midnight, pre-sleeping hours, but being that it is not tomorrow until you wake up, I qualify that as part of Saturday. Today was breakfast with Keith, coffee with Di, studying with Matt, gettting steak and beer with Kristen to celebrate going to school together an insane amount of years, movie watching with the housemates, voluntarily speaking on the phone for more than 5 minutes, falling into bed exhausted and now NOT BEING ABLE TO FALL BACK SLEEP. I’ve gotten very little sleep in the past few days. It’s affecting my eidetic memory and power of coherence. When I get my act together and start a blog I’m totally using Eidetic in the title.

I need to revise my 3.5 years essay because it’s lacking something and I don’t know what.

I have my list of things I’m going to miss about this place (or rather, people I’m going to miss) but I’m very much looking forward to going home, and seeing my Jersey boys, diner-ing, making Brent buy me drinks with his poker winnings, seeing Ray, who is home from Italy, letting Jon educate me about The City, psuedo-intellectual-Neo-Victorian coffee, etc. While I’m not looking forward to making lattes with my college degree, I’m looking forward to seeing the cafe superheroes and having my day brightened by all the cool booksellers.

I don’t think the fact that I’m done with college is going to sink in until the end of winter break, when everyone at home goes back to school and I stay in O-Town and go insane and speak German and study Wittgenstein and fall further in love with Nietzsche. I’m a really awful Jew. And my family is doing a very Jewish X-Mas this year, with Chinese food, movies, barbecuing, and no tree. This is on request of my father who is the one member of my immediate family that is not 100% Jewish and actually grew up celebrating X-Mas and being raised Protestant. Jewishness, however, has clearly corrupted him because Jews are a powerful, persuasive, and awesome race.

Thirty-ish hours until I’m done with finals. Then, calling up everyone I know to shriek “OMG I’m DONE!”, saying good-bye to people, one more Dunkin’ Donuts/confessional drive evening, packing, probably some crying because endings, good or bad, are naturally bittersweet. I’ll be in Jersey by dinnertime on Wednesday and hopefully in the vapid mobile sometime later that night.

Ten Things To Do in Ten Days

1) Drive my favorite aimless drive route

2) Spend the day hanging around the government department doing work

3) Uncommon Grounds for superior cappucino with Di

4) Confessional Drive

5) Parting Glass with the former reading group

6) Scotty’s with the misanthropes

7) Celebrate graduating with Xina with ridiculously expensive dinner

Trip to Dunkin Donuts after midnight

9) Jersey coffee with Kristen

10) Smoke cloves on my back porch, write insanely long essay on “Three-Point-Five-Years”

Take finals, graduate, pack, drive home

And live happily ever after.