Graduation Rumination I - My Story

December 11, 2014.

Today was my last day of classes of my second to last semester of college, and I’m currently sitting in the living room of this apartment that’s come to be my home for the past four months trying to figure out how that can be. When you come to college you’re handed this pen, and you might not necessarily be aware that you even got it. But you get this pen and you’re told to use it to write your story for all of your time here. And of course, it’s a pen, not a pencil, there’s no going back and erasing the less than favorable memories. The best you can do is scribble it out hoping you don’t look back and remember what exactly it is you scribbled out in the first place. And so you begin writing, kind of shaky at first, not really sure what you should be writing about, but trying to get as much down as possible. Pen meets paper, ink spills out, stories are started. You start to write about all the new friends you’ve made, and the boyfriend you managed to get, and this embarrassing story of when you fell up the stairs into chapel wearing a dress, and the nights you fought with those new friends and tears stained your pillow, and the all nighters you pulled just to get your work done, and the all nighters you pulled kissing a boy in the basement, and the church services that touched you, and those that scared you, and the break-ups, and the lost friends, and the new new friends, and the good roommates and the bad ones. And you write about the nights you laughed so hard you cried, and about the inside jokes, and the number of bowls of ramen consumed, and the job you have and sometimes hate, and the money you spend too recklessly, and the 1 am trips to Marty’s, and the night sky on the walk back from class, and the professor that pisses you off, and the papers you don’t think you’ll ever finish. You write about the tests you aced and the ones you failed, the games you won and those you got disqualified from, the nights God was show to you through friendships, and the nights you were filled with all consuming and crippling doubt. You write about the copious amounts of cookies eaten, and the times Lane food was unappealing, the times you were so homesick you weren’t sure you’d make it through the week, or month, and the times you loved being here so much you never wanted to leave. And suddenly your story really becomes just that, a story, your story. But somehow, it isn’t just yours. It’s at work with everyone else’s stories. All of these stories. All of these moments.

We’re all handed a pen, and with that we all become contributors to this greater story of Gordon College. And one day our story has to end, that’s just the way of things in this world. You have to turn that pen back in, hoping that somehow those things you managed to write were worth it. You see the small part you played in this greater whole, but you soon realize that this place, it’s gonna go on without you. But you have to bear in mind that you, too, will go on. And someday you’ll be handed a new pen, in a new place, for a new adventure, and a new story.  

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