Miami University football game, Sept. 15, 2007
For the last time, I make the schlep back to small-town Oxford, Ohio. This time, not with a car, but on a plane, and not with parents, but on my own. With help from Kyle. For the last time, I compulsively check my class rosters online, and see what books I need to spend my life savings on. I won't say this is the last time I will say goodbye to New York. I won't even say this is the last time I leave New York to go to Ohio. I can't help but hear the lyrics from "Maybe This Time" echo in my head. Senior year, here goes.
I can't help but note the significant changes that this year is pregnant with - I am sans boyfriend, best friend, and sans skating. I have wrestled with these changes all summer. For whatever reason, watching some of the most important people in my life walk across that stage and receive their rightfully earned diploma didn't hit me immediately (quite possibly because I was simultaneously fending off a 48-hour stomach flu). It took little hints, signs, and conversations before I felt the effects. You never know what you've got 'til it's gone. I truly understand this now.
I have spent the past three years of college feeling as though I'm floating. Floating to skating practice, to class, to the weight room, to my humble off-campus abode, to bed, only to get up and repeat the floating process the next day. Of course, there have been classes I have absolutely loved, and thus had perfect attendance, and those I absolutely loathed, and thus tried to come up with an excuse to miss as many as possible without failing. I have been affected by films, and guest lecturers, I have engaged in conversations with professors about life and diversity. I have laughed. I have cried. I have pulled all-nighters. I have spent $500 in coffee at the library. I have pored over maps and scholarly geographic journals. But have I found my passion? Have I found THE answer (or, at least, an acceptable one) to the perpetual question that follows around college seniors: 'What are you going to do after graduation?' This question is MUCH less fun to answer than, "what do you want to be when you grow up?", I have found.
To be blunt, I have no idea. Graduate school is on my radar, but not for a while. What's the sense in devoting yourself (not to mention your bank account) to something you are not 100% passionate about? I simply do not see the sense in it. At this moment, I would absolutely love to go to a lesser-known part of the world (a.k.a. not Western Europe, as much as I love it) and teach English. I heard a quote in the movie, "Eat, Pray, Love" last night that put my feelings about this into words perfectly: "I need to be unnerved." I have constantly questioned my abilities to teach, to coach, to lead. After captaining a varsity skating team, and coaching and caring for 20something children at 2 years of summer camp, I feel somewhat better, but by no means fully confident. But I NEED to be taken out of my comfort zone. Simply, I need to be unnerved.
