It was a fabulous, wonderful weekend marred only by the fact that I am returning to work instead of to school. I’ve been out of school for EIGHT MONTHS people, EIGHT MONTHS. Oh well, I’ll be going back at this time next year.

Laura was here visiting her brother, and though she was crunched for time, I got to see her on Thursday, which was lovely as always. We talked and talked, and went to Strand (I’m addicted), and I led her around like a blind lamb to slaughter. It’s only fair – I feel as if I’m carrying on a tradition, of sorts, as I was led around like a lamb to slaughter last summer. (Sebastian, you’re next!). I forget how much I miss her, even if she has become a liberal hippie. We hugged good-bye in the 14th Street Station and went back and forth like typical girls and made plans for my visit to Saratoga next month.

Friday at work, we were all pretty hostile because we weren’t getting a half day like everyone else on the planet, but it was quiet, and most of us were just wasting time online all day. After work I went out with some co-workers for awhile, came home, and read until Michael called.

I met up with Mike’s friend Iwho lives in SoHo. We drank beer whilst waiting for Michael to arrive and talked politics and books and made fun of Mike (who was an hour and a half late) Mike arrived and I bought a round of shots and we toasted to something, I don’t remember. Anyway, there was much merriment and I didn’t get home until 4 AM.

Saturday, Michael and I had quality time, lunch, sitting in Washington Square Park watching the NYU freshman (which I could write a book on in and of itself, it brought back so many weird memories), good-good conversation, stumbling into a table of political philosophy books, wandering aimlessly. We met up with Xina and her boy at the country music bar on the Upper East Side, and it was a fabulous time.

Sunday was recovering from Saturday’s antics

Monday, I went out to Rockaway Beach, which was lovely. It’s no Jersey Shore, but it’s okay. So I got a sunburn on the quintessential last day of summer, but it was just a really relaxing day, and I read a lot, and thought about the summer in my usual reflective way.

And now I’m back at work, and envious of those starting a new semester. Not because I miss college necessarily, but because I miss academia, and I belong in school. I was flitting around Washington Square Park, declaring “I’m enamored with this area, I want to go to school here!” but I worry about NYU’s Poli-Sci program. It’s…limited, to say the least, and while they do have a strong history department, I don’t really want a history PhD.

I am getting more and more serious about going to school in Texas. I mean, clearly I’m not quite cool enough for Manhattan, so why not go to Texas where every bar plays country music? And meet me a nice Southern Gentlemen. (To quote the favorite professor “Uck, forget about New York boys”) Although Brent was teasing that I am not graceful and refined enough to fit in down there. My take is I’ll be the vulgar Yankee girl. I’ll be a novelty. And I do know how to niche market.

I’m sitting on my balcony, looking at the skyline, thinking ‘blaaaah, I don’t want to go to work tomorrow’ and not wanting to study for the GREs, and well, I love lists, so:

What I Learned On My Summer Vacation

Or What I Learned In The Process of Job Searching, Apartment Hunting, Moving, and Other Assorted Growing Up Adventures

1) The Job Search is often a number games. Where you got your BA doesn’t matter. What you majored in matters even less. It is a matter of sending out hundreds of resumes, going on dozens on interviews, and even fewer second interviews. I am very, very lucky to have landed a job at a place I actually want to work.

2) New York is fucking hot in the summer

3) I can only like, (I mean, like, like) a guy maybe one every two-three years. I was trying to explain to a friend of mine who goes through men, well, rather frequently, that I just don’t LIKE most guys.  I get Serious-All-Consuming Crushes once every few years. And then they last and last until I either make him fall madly in love with me, or wind up getting rejected. And even after I get rejected I tend to hold on to Serious-All-Consuming-Crush until something new comes along and distracts me. Which happens maybe once every two to three years.

4) No matter how bad a day was, when you wake up the next morning and can see the sun rise over the Hudson, life is pretty damn good

5) Williamsburg and Park Slope, while “nice” are full of hipsters, which remind me too much of Hampshire students to live there. I live in Jersey City, fuck the stigma, my apartment is nicer and cheaper than anything I saw in either of those neighborhoods.

6) I have a little world for myself in Saratoga that welcomes me with open arms whenever I want to make the drive up there.

7) The cliché “sometimes it’s holding on that makes you strong. Sometimes it’s letting go,” is very true. It isn’t easy to do, but sometimes it’s the only thing you can do. Hobbes was completely right.

My best friend knows me disgustingly well. Actually, I already knew this, but I was reminded of it a lot this summer.

9) Hell is the 14th Street PATH station at three in the morning when its 100 degrees and insanely humid out. And you’re very, very drunk.

10) That I will be able to befriend random guys whereever I go because of my ability to take a shot of cheap vodka without flinching.

11) That I might actually want to go to school in Texas, because I love going to country-music bars

12) There are way too many pretty people in New York, and this makes me feel extraordinarily ugly on a regular basis

13) I discovered Strand bookstore, and I feel uneducated wandering through the history section there because there are just SO MANY books that I have not read.

14) I belong in academia. This real world this is a good experiment, a good test, if you will, a good way to make me appreciate academia, when I make a triumphant return to it’s hallowed halls in Fall 2006. I belong in academia, be it at Columbia or in Texas or Oregon or where ever and I will not let the fact that one person told me he saw me climbing the NYC  ladder affect my choices, because clearly, he had no clue who I was anyway.

15) I need to focus. Fall is for new beginnings. So here’s to a lot of GRE studying, Grad school applications, going out and being social, and reading all those books I bought.

I am in the midst of unpacking and there are boxes everywhere in my insanely small but perfect room (because it reminds me of Fain C and Fain C was home), and omg, I have a balcony and yes new buildings are going up and will eventually block the view but for now I can stand on my balcony and look at what I think is chelsea piers, although my NYC georgraphy is still very shotty, and I am most likely completely wrong and I could look it up but I am far too hyper for that so if someone could just tell me that would be great and I have to unpack and oh my god this is so perfect and amazing and wonderul and the girl who moved out of this room left a few things here including a pretty lamp, a TV?, and a VASE OF DEAD FLOWERS.

I was clearly meant to live right here. I am so happy.

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

After months of saying I wouldn’t come back in May to graduate, here I am. And this is

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.

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

I need to write lots of maudlin pages of how wonderful this visit was (and it’s still not over!!!). But for now, I will simply report that I am sitting in my old room in Fain C, having come home from dinner, driving, coffee, & confessions with one of my favorite people in the world, to hang out with my former housemate downstairs, where we decided, as we decided at 10:30 PM on so many nights, to go buy beer at Price Chopper, and then came home to have a few beers and watch whatever was on TV, and do bits of our homework while we watch, and I know that I am exactly where I need to be.

These Are the Last Words I Have to Say/It’s Always Hard to Say Goodbye/But Now It’s Time to Put This Book Away/And That’s the Story of My Life

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.

“I’ll put it this way — my life continues to be amazing. Not because it’s so good, or so perfect, or so easy, or so obvious, or so filled with excitement. But because things continue to just happen, all the time, that aren’t the things I necessarily would have expected. And whether or not that makes any sense, it’s a very good thing. A good way for a life to be.”

I’m in the last month now. It’s almost over.

Today:
“Is there anything you would do over? Is there anything you want to do that you haven’t done [at college]?”

(What’s the point of regret/They’re just lessons/We haven’t learned yet)

I just had possibly some of the most amazing 23 hours of my life.

I am a loser.

When I need comfort, I read my favorite parts of Atlas Shrugged, partially because reading my copy and my old notes remind me of the first time I read the book Also, I am a hopeless romantic, and Dagny and Rearden are the best literary couple ever.

I also like little snippets of randian wisdom to brighten my day, so I have a website with her quotes bookmarked.

Reason is not automatic Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone

Also, I like getting back from class and being in a better mood than when I left. It may have something to do with Evan sitting next to me and writing notes back and forth for 2 hours like middle schoolers.

My Professor, on the Jews “You guys are all right…but…”

Among other things.

And, we need the right to bear arms to shoot stupid people who don’t know what monotheism is.

Also, I was driving around listening to JBJ, and that also put me in a good mood.

Somehow I don’t think Rand would approve of JBJ. But i will attribute the apparent contradiction to the fact that I am a loser who only minutes ago exclaimed “Oh my god, we’re getting cable tomorrow, I can watch the primaries on TV”

And on that note, I’m going to bed

1st weekend bonding, being saved from the awful roommate, confessional why I transfered stories, knowing why never to ask the question “Why Did You Transfer?” in mixed company.

Girly movies, the mat with the ladybugs, singing the 1776 window song, Cherry Garcia drag show ice cream, Robo-Amazon-Truck-Driver. Cheater! the big sweatshirt, “it’s the guy in the furry Russian hat”,

“thats sketch”, thursday night dinners, i want to be japanese! i hate it when i tell the truth, this is gour-fucking-met, Di dancing in the d-hall, THIS IS ALL THE MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM! i wish i could be delusional & naive & then I could think I was going to just be a rock star, Matzoh ball soup addictions, he’s sketchy,  there are a lot of somalians, pssst, north quad vs south quad (South Quad Rules),

Walking to Uncommon Grounds and ranting, and confessing. Mostly forgotten Friday night of ‘Fun Day’ a school event that was actually amusing. The pond, running around barefoot,  in the middle of an open, viewable field, then running around the campus being giggly drunk girls and having conversations and taking twenty minutes to explain what should take 2 seconds.  waking up with the Worst. Hangover. Ever. but enjoying the feeling of being a typical college student.

The non naked table, “I just saw the boots and freaked out”, I can’t stand it when people I hate are liked by other people. Especially when its by people that I like.  short rides in cars for runs and conversations and honesty, our long lost sister, and that we all listened to the same Jimmy Eat World song the past summer

It just takes some time, little girl
You’re in the middle after all
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be alright.

And getting the house for next year. Perfect.

~pouring salt on the table
~Jesus lives there! (on the 11th floor of tower!)
~North Quad vs. South Quad (Wait Hall being weird and awful, Tower having a lot of really dumb, slutty people in it.
~I killed Jesus and that’s why you got your god damn Easter Basket
“That girl has dreadlocks & I can’t see over her” –Katherine
~There are lots of Somalians living in Lewisiton, Maine
~Christina being a racist because she hates the Quebeckers and getting stuck behind one coming back from jersey, and wanting to pop a giant easter bunny
~“What if the guys next to us are really loud” “Christina, I’ll take care of it” (because I will be the assassin of Hick A next year)
~“he’s probably coming over here because of the shirt”-Katherien, on why Will was going to come sit with Diane. Diane freaking out and realizing she left her top shirt unbuttoned.
~“It was a short, passionate love affair”-Diane about the yellow fruit things
~“Mocha java whateverthefuck”