Some Prolific Title

College State of Mind: The Lasts and the Finals

Here I am, 3:11 AM early Tuesday morning during finals week sitting at my desk contemplating life’s questions. I suppose that every question has a beginning. Mine, starts two years ago. Coming into Saint Mary’s, truthfully, I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be me; free and ready for adventures. Little did I know my attempt at being free left me locked down and chained by an unbeknownst weight on my shoulders, tied around my ankles, snared to the wall unable to escape. I came into college thinking that life’s greatest gifts would present itself right here and right now. Of course, being the naive freshman that I was, I was wrong. There was more to it, there was a lot to discover.

Now freshman year was a year full of lessons. I realized how passionate one person could be and how passion is more than influential, it’s contagious. My life’s lessons didn’t come bearing gifts, and it definitely was not the last, but it did come with growth. Being the person I was in high school, I thought I had all the answers in the palm of my hand. Boy was I wrong. High school did not prepare me for the real world. It never taught me how to cope with drastic change, it never taught me how to restrain strong emotions, it never taught me how to handle situations that put me in a position to choose between what is right and what is best. Nevertheless, it were these exact situations that put me here now at my desk, at 3:11 AM on a Tuesday morning during finals week.

I am, to say the least, depressed to leave. I graduate Saturday, and although it may be one of my most proudest moments, it is also my most regretful. I say this because it was contagious. Everything about SMC was contagious. Now, I didn’t want to originally be here, but it grew on me like a bacteria cultivated on an agar plate at 37 degrees Celsius. I fell in love with everything about SMC. I fell in love with the people, my friends, my major, my family, I lost myself to all of it and succumbed to the fact that I am meant to be here, yet here I am 2:34 AM on a Tuesday morning during finals week disheartened. I regret ever wanting to leave. I suppose this is only half the story.

The rest resides in the unfortunate obligation and how I have to leave here. That was all freshman year, and unfortunately the rest follows with this year. I thought myself a young and grown individual, but even after all I went through, even after all that change, I still had a lot to learn. The thing that classes can’t teach you is heart. Lectures and books lack the ability to make you feel for someone. That intuition, that bond, that connection, classes never teach you how to manage that. I lost a lot this year. I lost my main support system at SMC, I lost close friends, and for a split second, I lost that contagious colony of bacteria cultivated on an agar plate at 37 degrees Celsius. More importantly, I lost myself.

Losing myself may have just been the best thing to have happen to me because no longer was I bound by an unbeknownst weight on my shoulders, tied around my ankles, snared to the wall unable to escape, rather I was finally free. I was free of judgement, free of questions, free of the chain I constantly had to check on out of shear obligation rather than choice. I was finally away from the negativity of the ball and chain, and that’s exactly what I needed. I needed to surround myself with others who thirsted for growth, not those who hungered to be young forever. Now this is not to say you can’t have fun and that we should all just grow up, but the solution is your mentality. The solution is your perspective.

Perspective can change any negative situation into a positive one. “You have to lose yourself to find yourself.” And that is exactly what I did. I moved things around, made things better, worked harder, and imagined my life without negativity. I must admit, the negativity gets the best of me at times, but it gets the best of all of us. I’m human. I guess I sit here typing this up because I am genuinely happy for what these two years have brought me. I have been posting the most tragic and disheartening posts because it pains me to leave, but isn’t that the beauty of it? I am so genuinely happy that I was blessed with such an amazing life. I was given the opportunity to be sad; the opportunity to be invested in something so grand. If that’s what it means to be sad to leave, then shit. I love being sad.

Two years ago, I didn’t want to be here and here I am 3:11 AM on a Tuesday morning during finals week happy that I am sad. Perhaps I’m just delusional. That’s a possibility, but perhaps it’s growth. I am soon leaving SMC. It breaks my heart, but I am more happy to have been given these two years. It may not be fair to have only two years here, but I’ll take what I can get. “It’s better to have love and lost, than to never have loved at all.” I love you all. SMC, you will be missed.