The semester is winding down, and so is my on campus experience. Next semester I move back home to student teach, and the daily living and free will I thought that I had will come to an end. Moving home isn’t the worst thing in the world. All of the big times that I have shared with friends are now becoming lasts, and not firsts like they were not so long ago.
My mom said to me the other day, “Wow, college is almost over, it went by so fast.” Don’t I know it Paula. I just turned 21 over the summer, and I was able to finally go to the bars in Uptown and Downtown with all of my friends, but it’s only been four months instead of nine. I do think that I have lived up to the college experience though, especially this year.
Knowing that this was my last go around, I wanted to make the most of it. I’ve hung out with my friends almost every weekend, I have a sleepover with my best friend once a week on Wednesdays, I went to my first and only Pub Wednesday, and I have laughed and cried (and cried laughing) more than I ever thought possible about leaving this place. I even joined an intramural volleyball team with my coworkers, (we’ve been talking about it since we all started working together) and even made the playoffs.
I feel like I have only just gotten to know everyone in my major, and that we didn’t spend much time together at all, unfortunately. We just had our cohort bar crawl as a last get together, and the only thing everyone kept saying was “Why didn’t we do this sooner? Can we do it again next week?” You really don’t get to know someone or get close to people until you know that your time is running out.
Even today, Wednesday the 12th, is a last for me. Today is my last shift ever at the Gregory Street Fields, where I’ve been working since I started this job when I transferred here. Though I still have two shifts left, this one is special since it was where I started me journey at the Campus Recreation department in Competitive Sports. I’ve worked my way up from an official to a Supervisor, and it tears me up to think that I’ll be having my last ever shift on a random Tuesday.
I have a few friends who get to live their entire college experience in four years at ISU, and I’m extremely jealous, to say the least. While I’ll get to visit at least once a month, it won’t be the same. I’ll basically be working a full-time job, unpaid by the way, when this past semester I got to breeze through the semester, spending half my week on my couch. The 180 will surely give my whiplash. Though all in all I’m excited you can’t help but already miss the place where you’ve grown into who you really are. I’ve found myself here, and I’m already hating having to say goodbye.