Graduation Rumination VI - A Season Of Lasts

February 28, 2015.

Last night was my last Gordon Globes. That doesn’t seem like all that big of a deal, but it kind of is because it is yet another moment in the season of lasts. That’s all this year has seemed to be, really, a series of lasts, one after another, and it all started August 27^th – my last first day of school (wow that was 6 months ago). And then my last fall hill grill, my last homecoming weekend (as a student), my last Golden Goose, my last quad break, and my last Halloween. My last college birthday, my last Day of Prayer, my last Thanksgiving, my last fall finals. My last Christmas break, my last trip to Haiti with Gordon, and my last start of spring semester. My last school snow days, my last college Super Bowl, and my last Gordon Globes. It is the year of lasts, and there's so many more lasts to come.

There is an unmatched finality that comes with being a senior. Everything you’ve come to know so well is fleeting, and with that you must say goodbye to tradition, to routine, to what you’re accustomed to. It’s crazy, really, the way things end. The way you go through an entire year facing your last experience of any given situation. The way an entire lifestyle you’ve nestled yourself into starts to lose its definition and bleed into the unknown. I knew the morning of August 27^th when Emily and I took this Instagram that this year would be a tough one. I didn’t realize exactly how tough it would be until I started to slowly say goodbye to everything I've known since coming to Gordon. It’s as if I began this year perceptually reoriented to see everything through the lens of graduation. (Which according to How I Met Your Mother is an actual thing – graduation goggles).

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There’s something about the beauty of things that are fleeting, and that’s been affirmed in how I’ve come to value every experience I’ve had this year. As hard as it is to acknowledge the finality of so many things, it’s made me a heck of a lot more grateful for the experiences I've had and have to come. And in a way I’ve come to appreciate my impending graduation, because it’s made me see Gordon in a whole new light (but that’s another story altogether).

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