My fall quarter is finished, after one nearly interminable week, made doubly frustrating by the fact that, though I had all my work done on time and/or early, the stress of a finals week still manifested, perhaps more so than at the end of earlier terms. I believe that this may be due, in large part, to the fact that I am suffering a severe medical/psychological condition known as “Senioritis”, for which the only known cure is being done the heck with school. Possibly because I have a number of friends and acquaintances for whom this was their last quarter, as of last Thursday I was ready to be done, and not just for the quarter…for good.
In all honesty, I don’t know if I got a double-whammy with my readiness to graduate and an long stressful week on top of it, or if it was simply that my desire not to be there made my last week of school much less enjoyable. Probably a little of both, I suppose.
I don’t really feel like detailing every facet of my annoying week, but factors included a perfume-drenched coworker on my last day at PAEYC, getting kicked out of my own classroom and a couple of underclassman girls who were attempting to ambush their teacher with presents and choose to make their home base just a few feet from the spot I was sitting and trying to write a paper, and loudly discuss–between themselves and with others–whether said teacher had already left for the day and whether they should look for him elsewhere. Which they did not do.
Yesterday was finally my last day of the quarter. I dressed nicely for my presentation (and remembered the many reasons I always wear leggings instead of tights). I got my illustration properly mounted in time. I swapped wine labels with a couple classmates as though they were awesome trading cards, and one of those classmates accompanied Briggs and I to portfolio review. She and I ran around ecstatically flipping through portfolios and collecting business cards, chatting with graduating classmates and moaning in mild distress over the truly magnificent work that a few of our predecessors were displaying. Briggs got the gist of the displays in a few minutes and then wandered around in boredom until I took pity on him and bid my classmate farewell. Then, we headed to lunch at the little Chinese place on Mount Washington that I have been wanting to try for a long time (not the best food ever, but certainly decent +, and the waiter/owner was funny and gave us a hard time throughout the meal, which was entertaining). Then, Briggs dropped me back at school, where I sat through bad presentation after bad presentation (I do not know why more people do not take good advantage of Power Point. Seriously. Or learn how to give a presentation after however many years of school…I mean, I hate public speaking too, but come on!) and gave my own…and then sat threw a few more —and then I was done! We came home, we ate dinner, and I passed out on the couch watching Community.
Then, in the middle of the night, it happened.
I had a realization.
I have been talking for a year about how graduation will be here before I know it and how scary it will be to go out in the real world…but I don’t think it was really real until now. Sure, the thought of going out in the world was scary, but in the same way that I find the idea of sky-diving scary. Sitting here, on my couch, I can think, “Gee, standing in the open door of a plane, high above the earth, prepared to leap out and hope that my parachute opens correctly and that nothing goes wrong would be really scary.”…but that, no matter how good my imagination, simply does not compare to how I would feel were I actually perched in that doorway, (yes, I’m sure there is some kind of technical term, but I’m not a plane captain, so I don’t know those words.) about to leap into open air. And I know that this particular metaphor may be somewhat cliche, but I’m afraid of heights.
Okay, okay…I can sit on my couch and think, “gee, it would be mighty scary to fight a werewolf and an army of zombies with just a fire poker while wearing high-heels and a cocktail dress that makes me feel self-conscious!”, but, no matter how hard I imagine it, the scene just seems kind of funny…if I were really in that situation, I would probably be screaming like a banshee, blubbering like someone watching that scene at the end of My Girl for the first time and wetting myself like an incontinent 80-year-old trying to fight off an army of zombies and werewolves with a fire poker.
Anyway, that’s kind of what I realized about this whole graduation thing.
A quarter is 11 weeks. The quarter you graduate gets a week lopped off the end, so, ten weeks. That is not very much time. And yes, I have a couple weeks between now and then, but breaks are over before you even start them, it seems…and this is Christmas break, so some of that time will be spent making cookies and the like, and some of it will be spent (hopefully) working on my set up for Portfolio Review. It seems like I was JUST posting about starting my internship and how I just had one quarter left before my last quarter and how that was “Oooh! Super scary!” …I mean, last New Year seems like it was barely last week, so how soon is this going to be over? In the meantime, I need to get business cards printed, get my portfolio etched and shipped, figure out and create my self promo items, make my portfolio look GORGEOUS, figure out and make all the ins and outs of my portfolio review set-up, and, oh yeah, do work for my final quarter of classes AND an internship.
And then, get a job.
Fuck me.
