Life is truly fleeting. One minute your kindergarten teacher is reprimanding you for calling Lionel “fat” and, the next, you’re at the prom, you’re hammered and apparently, your girlfriend is having a panic attack. I can remember the end of the high school era and the summer that everyone still talks about.
Freshman year at college seemed like it started after I peed myself at my cousin’s graduation party, but that’s a semi-regular occurrence anyway, so I wouldn’t read too much into it.
My point is that it’s the end of another year; when everyone told me that college went too quickly, they weren’t kidding.
I feel like everything, in general, goes too quickly. The good of relationships, the jobs that we actually enjoy working, the people we meet along the way that get lost in the flow of life; all of these are gone before we even realize their true significance.
Who am I to reflect on just how fast college has gone? After all, I am only a sophomore and still have two more years to enrich myself in Fairfield’s rich Jesuit tradition otherwise known as “living the dream.” I am sure of one truth, though: my time at college, just as yours, is not infinite.
If our parents were the baby boomer generation, we’re the “indestructibles,” exempt from authority and consequence alike. That is just our mentality. Maybe our parents were the same, renegade types. I would like to think so at least, even though I still steadfastly hold that parents do not have sex.
You start to realize just how fast the time goes when you catch yourself talking to friends about events that happened years ago but still seem fairly recent (like that time your buddy fell through the bush outside of the winter dance and Public Safety still managed to miss him). At least it gave the Oak Room some use but seriously, how many dances can this school possibly have? I feel like someone is trying to get back at us because they didn’t make Grease in high school.
Anyway, it’s that time of year again, the last full week of school before finals, and we have to hunker down for days on speed-induced binges just to support unfair GPA expectations. Well maybe that’s a slight dramatization, but everyone will be working for the first time this year in the coming week.
It’s a melancholic feeling to know that good people are growing up this year, graduating into the real world. Some will get jobs, others will postpone the inevitable and go to grad school and a few might even do the Peace Corps.
I remember that feeling at the end of high school, knowing that there are some people who I won’t be shaking hands with ever again. Not that that was always a bad deal, but I feel like it will be the same when college is over; you’ll keep your close friends close, occasionally grab drinks with a mild acquaintance and start a prioritized, grown-up life.
The thought of having an actual schedule, not the Fairfield University catering service they’re running here, paying all the bills on your own, having kids and going to relatives’ houses for Easter, is scary.
While I certainly have very few nice offerings about Fairfield, I will say, on days like this, when there wasn’t even a question if you were going to class, there really isn’t a better place. I won’t go on though because the egos running this place certainly do not need any more inflation.
Beach towels, semi-bloated stomachs and you already ran out of shorts; it’s another disconcerting semester’s end. At least we can still come back here though, to the locked townhouses basements, to harassing pretend cops, to parking tickets just for registering your car and, my favorite of all, a registration system that does not allow students to actually register.
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