Class of 2004, and all the means
May. 21st, 2004 01:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI love Quiggles and Lee (aka PresBo). They made graduation ceremonies fun, and Lee rocks my world for putting up with the PETA asshats who interrupted my graduation. What the hell were they thinking their shit would do for their cause? All they did was piss off 30,000 people who were not at all swayed by their rudeness to be favorable to their cause. In fact, it would have quite the opposite effect, as it did with me. I did indeed go to www.columbiacruelty.com but only to look and see if I could write to them and call them all assholes and announce my intention to slaughter apes wantonly until they apologized for disrespecting me and my man Lee. We ROARED for the GS students because the second protestor tried to interrupt their dean's asking Lee to graduate them. They're sorta an unfelt presence on campus to a large degree, and they didn't deserve such treatment. ROAR FOR GS.
Yay for the diploma. It's soooo officious looking. Yay for my free towel and my DVD with the "Roar, Lion, Roar" sing-a-long. These are things I like a lot about the 250 thing--we get a lot more attention. Columbia students are attention whores, or at least CC students are. We haven't gotten much attention these four years; suddenly, it's all about us and I'm flipping out. It's like we matter. Really, they're just trying to butter us up for the donations (ARGH AT THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION FUND RAISING AT MY CLASS DAY), but hey, they like us! Quiggles said we're the hottest, too!
I've really been a mess since graduating. Graduation is probably the worst thing that's happened to
me in recent memory. It's not that I don't relish not constantly being busy with schoolwork, or the
stress of having to do well...it's just...things are missing. People are going to leave and not come
back, or be gone for a long time. It's change. Change and leaving behind the carefree, relatively,
years of college. I really, really loved being at school, in the sense that there was time to hang
out and be stupid, no pressure to be something, to do something with my life necessarily. It's the
freedom to have fewer worries that I miss.
Everything that was the last thing that I would do, I cried. My mom gave me a gift for being done
with college and I started to cry, and I felt bad for making her feel bad. I felt bad for not being
happy, and they seemed awkward and unsure about how to talk to me about leaving because I was prone
to fall apart whenever I thought about it. It was so hard to be happy. It's wonderful how people
were for me, celebrating for me, but I couldn't summon any happiness or even just satisfaction at
being done. Because I didn't want to be done. I wanted to keep just being with people here, to keep
getting up and learning and working to have spending money while being taken care of by parents...
who were still absent...
I wanted to make up a list of things I'd miss, but I'd miss a lot more than I wouldn't miss. Things
I won't miss are finite, things I miss are infinite or else impossible to describe accurately.
Little things like the internet connection speed, the high-powered showers, leaving AIM on allllll
day, sleeping till 2 pm on weekends, staying up till 3 am because I didn't have to be up until 11
am. The irregularity of the the schedule from day-to-day so that I got to anticipate having extra
time on one day, less time on another. Going from class to class, choosing things to do, playing
video games in a suite with people, visiting people with better rooms than I... All little things
that made college so much fun. No, it wasn't all fun, but the good far outweighed the bad.
The reason is the people I've met. I met WONDERFUL people. People who shared my interests and people
who didn't, who mocked me enough to make me get over myself and who weren't ashamed to be unhappy
together with me. Case in point: Liz M and I crying over the last time we got to order Saigon Grill.
It was a positive feedback loop. I cry, she cried, I cried harder, she cried harder. Running into
people over the past few days was enough to make me cry, just thinking about how they were moving
on, how we were all going to break apart and not have the opportunity to be close like this again.
Without these people, college would have been at most some interesting subject matter and a degree.
Instead, it was a life, and it was a good one.
I won't reminisce about how fast time has passed, not in this way. It's obvious to most people,
especially graduates, that time passes quickly when you're living so well and the future's so far
away. Instead, I find myself thinking more on how I first came to school, packed overly full into my
small room in Wallach, where I sandwiched myself between dresser and desk, placed new things in
shelves, and learned to use my laptop and new DVD--the Matrix. My first DVD. Where I tried to sign
up or participate in everything just to meet people and ended up loving CUnity, a now-failed
Orientation idea, and walking around the strange new place of the village in my pleather pants from
high school because the Orientation people didn't think to buy tickets in advance for "Rocky Horror
."
I remember sitting in my room after each event non-plussed in terms of knowing people more than
names, faces, polite talk--all the things that were troublesome for my time in Australia. By
circumstance, my family was across the country. So far away physically, and it compounded the
problem of feeling alone in a new place, a huge new place. I cried then too, lonely in the midst of
so much hollow new stuff that wasn't filled with new friends, new people. How would I ever meet
anyone I could talk to beyond the simplistic "hello, my name is"? I cried because here was all that
was going to keep me company.
Then I met people, the things that would really keep me company. Carrie at CUSFS, Liz at Lit Hum,
Lisa through Elizabeth, and so on and so on until I knew people. It was checking out, seeing the
room empty that made such a strange parallel. Because the room was empty of stuff, but there was so
much history inhabiting it that was to disappear in a way, because the person coming in after me
wouldn't know about how our suites had anime wall scrolls everywhere, how the hole in the wall got
there, or where the list of suite quotes was, or how Wallach 2C was *trying* to lose the sex contest
with 2A, or that River was the site of DDR nights, movie nights in Schermerhorn, Watt parties and
Lord of the Rings. All of that was going with me, and someone else was going to stuff full of their
memories and it wouldn't matter to anyone who wasn't me what had happened there. I feel so
insignificant, that things were over, the moment of glory gone.
And I hate that it would ever be like that. I can't be happy to leave because of what's left behind,
who I won't see everyday or every week. And I will miss that. I'm excited, on some level, just like
high school, moving on, but since I'm not going on to something specific, it's less exciting, and
more depressing to leave absolutely behind the time of being less than an adult. Self support is
great, but knowing that responsibility is going to be somewhat crushing is less than encouraging. I
look at the beautiful necklace that was my present from my mother. I blotted my eyes as I looked at
it. It was beyond wonderful of her, a gift that was very perfect (I could never have picked out a
piece of jewelry more lovely), but it was a congratulations that was a physical, tangible "I'm proud
of you" and it was so wonderful, I cried happy and sad at once. Glad she was proud of me, sad that
it was over, sealed with this gorgeous trinket. I think I gave the wrong impression, that I wasn't
grateful for it. Mostly, I think they're not used to me being so sentimental. I'm not either, hence
my utter exhaustion, emotionally and physically.
Maybe that's what the problem is, being exhausted. I've never felt so tired. I spent the weeks prior
to finals studying and trying to schedule interviews and apartment searches. Then massive study
cramming prior ot tests, testing that was awful or arduous, then anxiety-induced insomnia despite
desperately needing the sleep. Then getting up early to have fun and go out to movies and prep for
the Senior Ball, and, of course, Class Day and Commencement themselves. Getting up earlier than my
body likes or was ever inclined towards doing...then the idea of leaving my home away from home, my
friends who wouldn't be around next year, the knowledge that there was the chance to revisit but not
truly ever return to these past four years.
I need to just sit and cry for a full hour, a full day, there just hasn't been time while I've been
trying to see people, to rush around getting things ready to go, interviews and searches again, the
works. After that, after I grieve for the death of what was, maybe I can be more encouraged by the
life of things yet to come.
Yay for the diploma. It's soooo officious looking. Yay for my free towel and my DVD with the "Roar, Lion, Roar" sing-a-long. These are things I like a lot about the 250 thing--we get a lot more attention. Columbia students are attention whores, or at least CC students are. We haven't gotten much attention these four years; suddenly, it's all about us and I'm flipping out. It's like we matter. Really, they're just trying to butter us up for the donations (ARGH AT THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION FUND RAISING AT MY CLASS DAY), but hey, they like us! Quiggles said we're the hottest, too!
I've really been a mess since graduating. Graduation is probably the worst thing that's happened to
me in recent memory. It's not that I don't relish not constantly being busy with schoolwork, or the
stress of having to do well...it's just...things are missing. People are going to leave and not come
back, or be gone for a long time. It's change. Change and leaving behind the carefree, relatively,
years of college. I really, really loved being at school, in the sense that there was time to hang
out and be stupid, no pressure to be something, to do something with my life necessarily. It's the
freedom to have fewer worries that I miss.
Everything that was the last thing that I would do, I cried. My mom gave me a gift for being done
with college and I started to cry, and I felt bad for making her feel bad. I felt bad for not being
happy, and they seemed awkward and unsure about how to talk to me about leaving because I was prone
to fall apart whenever I thought about it. It was so hard to be happy. It's wonderful how people
were for me, celebrating for me, but I couldn't summon any happiness or even just satisfaction at
being done. Because I didn't want to be done. I wanted to keep just being with people here, to keep
getting up and learning and working to have spending money while being taken care of by parents...
who were still absent...
I wanted to make up a list of things I'd miss, but I'd miss a lot more than I wouldn't miss. Things
I won't miss are finite, things I miss are infinite or else impossible to describe accurately.
Little things like the internet connection speed, the high-powered showers, leaving AIM on allllll
day, sleeping till 2 pm on weekends, staying up till 3 am because I didn't have to be up until 11
am. The irregularity of the the schedule from day-to-day so that I got to anticipate having extra
time on one day, less time on another. Going from class to class, choosing things to do, playing
video games in a suite with people, visiting people with better rooms than I... All little things
that made college so much fun. No, it wasn't all fun, but the good far outweighed the bad.
The reason is the people I've met. I met WONDERFUL people. People who shared my interests and people
who didn't, who mocked me enough to make me get over myself and who weren't ashamed to be unhappy
together with me. Case in point: Liz M and I crying over the last time we got to order Saigon Grill.
It was a positive feedback loop. I cry, she cried, I cried harder, she cried harder. Running into
people over the past few days was enough to make me cry, just thinking about how they were moving
on, how we were all going to break apart and not have the opportunity to be close like this again.
Without these people, college would have been at most some interesting subject matter and a degree.
Instead, it was a life, and it was a good one.
I won't reminisce about how fast time has passed, not in this way. It's obvious to most people,
especially graduates, that time passes quickly when you're living so well and the future's so far
away. Instead, I find myself thinking more on how I first came to school, packed overly full into my
small room in Wallach, where I sandwiched myself between dresser and desk, placed new things in
shelves, and learned to use my laptop and new DVD--the Matrix. My first DVD. Where I tried to sign
up or participate in everything just to meet people and ended up loving CUnity, a now-failed
Orientation idea, and walking around the strange new place of the village in my pleather pants from
high school because the Orientation people didn't think to buy tickets in advance for "Rocky Horror
."
I remember sitting in my room after each event non-plussed in terms of knowing people more than
names, faces, polite talk--all the things that were troublesome for my time in Australia. By
circumstance, my family was across the country. So far away physically, and it compounded the
problem of feeling alone in a new place, a huge new place. I cried then too, lonely in the midst of
so much hollow new stuff that wasn't filled with new friends, new people. How would I ever meet
anyone I could talk to beyond the simplistic "hello, my name is"? I cried because here was all that
was going to keep me company.
Then I met people, the things that would really keep me company. Carrie at CUSFS, Liz at Lit Hum,
Lisa through Elizabeth, and so on and so on until I knew people. It was checking out, seeing the
room empty that made such a strange parallel. Because the room was empty of stuff, but there was so
much history inhabiting it that was to disappear in a way, because the person coming in after me
wouldn't know about how our suites had anime wall scrolls everywhere, how the hole in the wall got
there, or where the list of suite quotes was, or how Wallach 2C was *trying* to lose the sex contest
with 2A, or that River was the site of DDR nights, movie nights in Schermerhorn, Watt parties and
Lord of the Rings. All of that was going with me, and someone else was going to stuff full of their
memories and it wouldn't matter to anyone who wasn't me what had happened there. I feel so
insignificant, that things were over, the moment of glory gone.
And I hate that it would ever be like that. I can't be happy to leave because of what's left behind,
who I won't see everyday or every week. And I will miss that. I'm excited, on some level, just like
high school, moving on, but since I'm not going on to something specific, it's less exciting, and
more depressing to leave absolutely behind the time of being less than an adult. Self support is
great, but knowing that responsibility is going to be somewhat crushing is less than encouraging. I
look at the beautiful necklace that was my present from my mother. I blotted my eyes as I looked at
it. It was beyond wonderful of her, a gift that was very perfect (I could never have picked out a
piece of jewelry more lovely), but it was a congratulations that was a physical, tangible "I'm proud
of you" and it was so wonderful, I cried happy and sad at once. Glad she was proud of me, sad that
it was over, sealed with this gorgeous trinket. I think I gave the wrong impression, that I wasn't
grateful for it. Mostly, I think they're not used to me being so sentimental. I'm not either, hence
my utter exhaustion, emotionally and physically.
Maybe that's what the problem is, being exhausted. I've never felt so tired. I spent the weeks prior
to finals studying and trying to schedule interviews and apartment searches. Then massive study
cramming prior ot tests, testing that was awful or arduous, then anxiety-induced insomnia despite
desperately needing the sleep. Then getting up early to have fun and go out to movies and prep for
the Senior Ball, and, of course, Class Day and Commencement themselves. Getting up earlier than my
body likes or was ever inclined towards doing...then the idea of leaving my home away from home, my
friends who wouldn't be around next year, the knowledge that there was the chance to revisit but not
truly ever return to these past four years.
I need to just sit and cry for a full hour, a full day, there just hasn't been time while I've been
trying to see people, to rush around getting things ready to go, interviews and searches again, the
works. After that, after I grieve for the death of what was, maybe I can be more encouraged by the
life of things yet to come.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-05-23 07:14 am (UTC)Hope you find something to delay your beig forced into the "Real World" that my parents keep beating me about the head with. "Oooh, the *real* world, the one with all the wars and the stress and the nastiness and all that. What the hell do I want to be in the *real* world for?".