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

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

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.

-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

You keep coming back to this, this empty dorm room, the lengthening and shortening of your hair, from a tank top to a sweatshirt to a t-shirt.

Last night, you got to campus, and you went out for a drive with Sebastian, because he has become one of your closest friends, and you can talk to him about anything, and he’s happy you’re up here. You stopped at Scotty’s for breakfast food. On the drive home, you talked about how you’re both nostalgic people – how this time of year, this weather just plays on the sentimentalist in you.

You come home (and yes, you did just call it home) and you think about how this little room in Fain C feel so right to you. You went through so much in it. You arrived early that semester – you could have had your pick of rooms. Keith already had claims on the biggest one. Erin wanted the same room she had last year. The two other rooms are bigger. You almost took the room that is now Leah’s. But you didn’t. This room just felt right to you.

You moved into this empty dorm room in September a broken, sad, mess of a person. You moved out of this empty dorm room in December as a stronger person, at peace with all events and circumstances. In this room, you cried so hard you broke the capillaries around your eyes. In this room you giggled with Xina over irrelevant bit of humor. Tonight, you went out for one beer with her – at DA’s where she took you last year at midnight to celebrate your 21st birthday, even though both of you were hungover and didn’t want to drink – and you hugged her good-bye, and you both chastised yourself for being so god damn maudlin, because you were supposed to have been done with this place in December. But here you are, in that empty dorm room that just feels right, where you drank bottles of vodka, and screamed over the phone, and cried over the phone, and finally flirted over the phone. In this room you learned more in four months that you learned in the rest of college combined. You changed in this room. You didn’t realize how much these four walls had meant to you until you came back in early April, and felt that it was exactly where you needed to be.

You feel that way now too, and that’s why you came back. You came back, because you wanted to skip through Case parking lot barefoot and proclaim, “I’m a dirty hippie college student!” and embarrass Sebastian, who’s dressed in a suit. You wanted to be here, because you’re going to walk with Xina who has been with you since day one at Skidmore, and you’re going to sit with Kristen. Today, Kristen’s mom showed you a picture of the two of your at your nursery school graduation. You’re both wearing paper mortarboard hats. You looked at each other and said “We are getting old” because you’ve known each other for eighteen years. You have never been the best of friends, or even close friends, but you have been through a lot together. You want a picture of the two of you in your college regalia. You came back, because you got to bring your parents to the government department reception and introduce them to the professors they had heard so much about. You got to hear your professors tell your parents wonderful things about you, things you know were genuine because you heard what they said to other people’s parents, and you know what a cliché sounds like. You came back, because after the reception, you went to dinner with your parents, who looked at you and said, “I had no idea you were this well regarded! Your professors really respect you…we’re so proud of you.”

You came back, because you wanted to see your favorite professor, who gave you a hug and said, “You’re glowing! Tell me all about this post-college life of yours.” You came back because Sebastian tells you that you do indeed rock a suit and heels, and you sit together and make plans to take over the political science Department of Columbia University. You came back, because you got to find out that you’ve accomplished your goal of being a footnote.

You came back, because you wanted to walk up the Scribner steps and walk across campus and breathe the spring air. You haven’t cried, but you’ve felt “weepy” but it’s in a good way – you have something to be nostalgic about. Last May, you sat on the porch of your old Scribner house, the one that never really felt like home, and scoffed when Evan told you that by December you would have something to feel nostalgic about. He was right about that, because by December you were realizing that you did build yourself a little world here. And now, a year after that conversation, you can’t express what this place has meant to you. Yes, you were lonely. Yes, you never quite fit in. Yes, you hated it sometimes and you wanted nothing more than to graduate and get out. But you wouldn’t change a think about it.

You came back, because you like the person that this place made you, and you like the person you’re becoming. You came back, because you wanted to celebrate the good that this place has given you, and the sentimental sap in you loves the pomp and circumstance of graduation. You came back, because you’re not indifferent to this place – you only thought you were.

You came back, because, even though December held a second beginning, and this May hold what should be a final end, you feel at peace. You feel like everything is okay. You feel like you are strong enough to don regalia and walk, even though this is a place that brought you heartache. You feel strong enough to defy the tyranny of the majority.

You came back, because even though you finished the degree requirements in December, you’ve treated yourself like a college student. You treated those months as a time to earn money, do what you needed to do, and now you feel absolutely ready to face the real world, and do what you want to do. You came back because you want to celebrate that you can do what you want to do.

You came back, because you weren’t done yet, and sitting in this empty dorm room, you know you finally are. You are sad, but not depressed-sad, maudlin-sad. And then you’re happy that you have something to be nostalgic about in the first place.

You’re sitting in an empty dorm room. Your hair is shorter than it was in December, longer than it was last May. You’re wearing a tee-shirt, not a tank top or sweatshirt. The weather is right now, for it to be an ending. You’re sitting in an empty dorm room, and you feel all right. You feel like your life is headed in the right direction. You scan this little room, and know that this is really the end, and you won’t be coming back like this ever again, and while it makes you a little sad, it makes you happy to know that you had something here to leave in the first place.

You keep coming back to this, this empty dorm room, and after this, you won’t. This is the REAL end; this is the end you wanted to avoid, because you were afraid you would get like this, and afraid getting like this would depress you. It doesn’t. You’re nostalgic, because there are parts of this place that you love…that you DID love. You are in your empty dorm room, where you grew up more in four months that you would have in four years of college, and you’re just, to use the hippie terminology, at peace. You are so happy to feel the way you feel. You came back because you wanted to remind yourself of that.

So you’re sitting in your empty dorm room, in jeans and a black tee-shirt (your fallback outfit in warm months), and you’re so glad you came back.

And if makes you happy then that’s the only excuse you need.

“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.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.

–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.

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

There was this, from Michael, and I’m lucky no one sits by me at work because it made me all teary-eyed.

Rachel,
I am so happy for you – I have no words.  Enjoy these coming days. Dress in the traditional regalia, take pictures, and do us all a favor… smile. You endured something  unknown by many, and now it’s time to party and live life to its ends.
 
In other words: Congratulations babe. You deserve this. And it’s only the beginning.”

 
And this:, from Sebastian:

 I won’t sing anything because you’re doing it for yourself not for me. I will be glad that you are honoring your efforts but the honor that you deserve is not to be tainted with songs from a stupid cartoon movie.

I know some awesome, wonderful guys. And people wonder why I’m so protective of the men in my life. It’s because they rule, duh.
 
In addition, Xina and I have squealed over the fact that we can walk together and write “Transfer Girls” on our caps, Sebastian WILL sing, and I have already announced that I will hear no criticisms of my decision. 
 

“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 am, worried however, about my impending would-be graduation. I want to go up to Sartaoga and see professors and a couple people, but I know being in the area would possibly depress me. I want to go up to Hampshire and ring the bell, but I feel as if I would just get sad about the whole transferring thing, like I did last May. But until the opportunity to participate in these events actually passes me by, I’m going to be mildly anxiety ridden, doubting myself, and wondering if should just give in and participate. That’s why I’ve chosen May 21 as a countdown, because after that it will all be over, and I won’t have to worry in a “should I/shouldn’t I” fashion.
 
And strangely, I’m leaning towards the “go to graduation” side even though I have no one to walk with because Xina is a BS not a BA.
 
This is ALL Sebastian’s fault.

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.

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

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 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.

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.