When it's the Last First Day

07:47

Going to be a little more personal on the blog right now. I'm feeling pretty nostalgic today (I think it's due to the huge blizzard we experienced in New York yesterday) and I just wanted to talk out how I feel about starting my last first day of school tomorrow. So if there are any college seniors out there that are in the same boat as me right now your advice would be very much appreciated.
I'm not scared to end school at all because I feel ready to start my life. But there is something innocent that is about to end in a few months. It's the kindergartener with a brand new lunch box, the fourth grader with the braces, the eighth grader who is too cool for anything, the high school junior driving to school on their own for the first time... It's all of these things that have revolved around education for so long. It was always the center of everything. It was the reason to get up five days a week from the age of 4 to 22. It was the fights you had with your parents over a bad letter grade.
And now, in about four months, someone is going to look me in the eye, hand me a piece of paper and tell me that it's over. That all those years of anxiety, happiness, stress, and elation are finished.
Lord knows I'm not one who handles change well. But this change... am I really prepared? Starting from learning the most basic material like the A, B, C's to complex media planning and buying strategies.
And not only that but the fact that New York will shortly end it's chapter for me. All the growing I did here and the stories I will have to tell will all be past tense. That high school Senior who cried to her mom about how badly they wanted to leave Orange County, the people from high school, all of it! And now I am knowingly zeroing in on that life again. That has been the accumulation of my time in New York... returning back to my home town. Sure I did a lot, I experienced a lot, I learned a lot. But so did everyone else, in their own way. My friends who stayed at home experienced a completely different way of life than me. Not that one or the other is better but they aren't the same. Hearing from friends that they can't believe I buy my own toothpaste because that's what their parents do is alarming. But if that's what they know it can't be wrong?
So maybe that's what I am most nervous for. Not the job search process (although it is quite daunting) because I'm ready for that. But its saying goodbye to the 5 year old Sam with giant buck teeth who cried in class because a flag was covering up something on the wall and she couldn't read it. It's going back to the friends who have had their tooth paste bought their whole life.
I know there is going to be a lot of soul searching this semester as I evaluate my strengths and really figure out what I want in the next stage of life. I want to walk across that stage in May and know that my education taught me more than how to count or read. It taught me to be exactly who I am


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