This past weekend, hundreds of parents descended upon campus for one of the only coordinated weekend adventures of the spring semester: Junior Parents Weekend.
The Gala flew by in a night of introducing parents, going over the majors and hometowns of friends, and undoubtedly being questioned about relationship statuses. Not to mention successfully avoiding dancing (like father like daughter). Presentations, in Arts and Letters at least, were engaging for me, but my parents didn’t get too invested in the presentations that weren’t in my major.
Thanks to the 10-hour drive from Philly, the weekend I got with my parents worked out to around 36 hours, so our JPW was half over by the time mass rolled around. Mass was lovely, and my parents were finally able to hear me play the handbells as a part of the gigantic choir and orchestra. However, the homily was the first time the weight of this weekend finally hit me.
But it wasn’t about the present.
Father Matt of Dunne Hall was the homilist and called us first to grab the hands of our parents and friends in gratitude for leading us to where we are now. I was over with the handbell choir, so this didn’t have quite the same impact. Still, our collection of musicians have brought each other to where we are now, and like every club does for its members, it has impacted my life.
He then asked us all to think back five semesters. To think of what we expected out of college, who our friends were, if we could even imagine the people we are today. This hit me like nothing else this weekend had. Five semesters ago, I was majoring in Chemistry, had a completely different small group of friends, and had no idea of what would happen. I couldn’t have imagined the people here I would come to love so dearly and how happy studying English would make me. I hadn’t gone on an SSLP and worked in a shelter, hadn’t had a paper on gender issues in science accepted to a conference, hadn’t led my hall choir for mass, hadn’t gone to demonstrations on campus. I couldn’t have dreamed of a fraction of these, or possibly known how this would change my life.
However, Father Matt also mentioned the dreaded word: graduation. The next time the class of 2018 is all together like we were last weekend, will be when we all are about to leave. We have fifteen months to go. There is plenty of time ahead of us here, but I never dealt with the fact that we are in a timeframe where a countdown means something. Fifteen months is short, some of it is lost to summer break and internships, and then we are in the home stretch of senior year. This is the closest I have gotten to understanding the emotions of the class of 2017 at this moment.
Father Matt’s homily reflected on the past events we had been through, from Father Ted’s funeral to football games, and put us in place of reflection. We have accomplished things here. We have made impacts, great and small, on our dorms and our clubs and our universities. We have fifteen months left, so what can we do with that?
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