It’s been over ten months since my college commencement. It’s really hard to believe that it’s been that long since graduation – kinda seems like yesterday – and yet the world of Hamtech classes, capoeira club dinners, Friday afternoon chemistry lectures, studying for tests, working at the Writing Center, lunch hour volleyball games, hanging out in the suites, movie nights, Commons food, bitterly cold winter mornings… all those things suddenly seem very far away from my current reality, like they happened a lifetime ago. It’s not really a lifetime, though, just one chapter of a lifetime… a chapter that closed on May 22, 2005.
It’s a singularly odd experience to reflect back on my college days, because what I feel is indescribable. There were soooo many good times. And yet I don’t long to be back there – not because I didn’t enjoy my time at Hamilton; on the contrary, I loved it – but simply because I sense that the college chapter is inevitably and irrevocably over, and I fully accept that, without sadness or nostalgia, just a profound gratitude for the wonderfulness of those years.
I had a singularly odd moment the other day. I was considering buying the 2006 guide to markets for freelance writers, and then I thought, “Eh, there’s not much point, since the year 2006 is almost over. I might as well wait for the 2007 edition.” Then my brain went, “Wait… WHAT?!” Eventually I figured it out: it’s autumn here, the weather is getting colder, and the new academic year recently started. In my mind, these things are associated with September/October, i.e. approaching the end of the calendar year, and so I instantaneously and unconsciously translated that into thinking that 2006 was drawing to a close. Weird!
