Final things

Today is my last - repeat, LAST - day of student teaching in the middle/high school. Here is where you say, WHAT?!? Jillian, you only started student teaching 5 minutes ago! How can you be done already?!?

Ok, I get it...so maybe you're not saying that. But I am. How does stuff like this go by so fast? And I'm not just talking a period of 15 weeks or so, people. I'm talking about bigger things, like all of college. I feel like it started last year, and all of a sudden I'm almost done. Looking back on it all, I wish I had savored more of what I'm sure I then considered boring and mundane. Certain things stick out in my memory, to be sure: music major parties, late night impromptu hymn-sings in practice rooms (don't judge, now...), various trips to Boston, orchestra concerts, glorious summers filled with ice cream and adventures, that one time we got stranded at the T station because someone's car battery died and then we got lost on the way home...

I've always thought of myself as someone who is good with change. Not much phases me, and I'm usually pretty happy no matter where I am or who I'm surrounded by. But somehow this is different, bigger than other changes. Leaving college isn't like leaving home at the end of high school; nothing is going to remain the same after we're all gone, because, well, we're all gone. We have to pretend to be grown up and responsible, and the constant peer support system won't be quite so tangible anymore. Maybe I'm overanalyzing. It's not like I'm going to become some new and improved version of myself simply by walking across a platform and getting handed an empty folder by some guy with a lot of academic power. But maybe I'm not. I feel rather naive and unprepared for life post-academia. I've been a student for 16 years straight, and anything before that surpasses my memory span.

I'm not sure what my point is here. Maybe it's just that I'm finding out - like everyone does - that we can't live like Peter Pan forever, much as some of us might like. I'm not scared. I guess this is it: life is going to get a lot...bigger in the next few weeks, and that expansion process comes with some odd mix of joy, apprehension, and excitement, and will be, above all else, seriously bittersweet.