Wednesday, May 11, 2005

last day of class!

“Bittersweet” is an overused word, especially at this time of year.  Everyone’s saying it.  Or thinking it.  Including me, I have to confess, despite my reluctance to fall in…  But it’s true. 

Today was the last day of classes, for spring semester and therefore (if you’re not sticking around for the summer), the entire year.  Sweet.  And some of the best people in the world are graduating or leaving… Bitter.  So even I am lapsing into clichés…  Rats.

Freshman year I was just so excited to be done with class… off to be home, to work and earn money, to chill out and relax.  Sophomore year, I was getting on a plane, leaving England (which was really hard to do) and coming back to a new job (proofreading for a publishing company).  Hard and exciting at the same time.

This year… ah, this year.  I’m a junior who has had the luck (and misfortune) to get along really well with a group of seniors—who are graduating in a week and a half.  Two of them are going overseas—to Africa and India—places I’m not likely to get to anytime soon.  So that’s really, really sad, seeing them go.  Exciting… but sad.

So let’s not dwell on it.

The last day of classes is fun.  Suddenly all my profs are giving their last bits of wisdom, and it’s just barely sinking in for me that: we’re done! 

On Monday—so, the second-to-last day—my poetry class spent our time looking through literary magazines, discussing publication, and eating ice cream.  Not a bad way to help wrap up a semester.  (Plus more motivation for my ever-approaching writing summer: maybe I’ll send some poems out?  Just to see what happens?)

And then today—the real last day of class—my sociology prof was telling us about how when everything’s said and done, it all comes down to relationships, not what you know.  (Though I’m sure that won’t cut it on the final, ha ha ha.  “I didn’t study, but look at all my friends!”  No, he said that that’s why you study sociology: to learn about those relationships.) 

I so appreciated that reminder.  This year I feel like I’ve learned a lot about relationships, about community.  Just how vital it is in everything we do.  And so it was amazing to hear that from a prof as well—that it’s about living together in community, it’s about being there for other people, not about a 3.5 GPA.  And while we still need to study (ha ha), we need to remember the other reasons why we’re here.

He also was talking about how we should never shrink away from God stretching us—that we learn most when we submit to that.  Again, amidst all my wailing about close friends leaving and everything being different next year—what a good reminder. 

All my profs were thanking us for a good semester and for the honor of working together…

As a student, I feel so inept on the last day.  I’d really like to give my profs a hug—or something—because how can you thank them for the hours they spent muddling through essays that could have stood more revision (like, a lot more revision)?  Or poems that could have handled a lot more tweaking?  For treating us like adults, for being gracious, for getting excited for us?  All the patience, the understanding, the wisdom that they give us day after day.

Yes, I know I sound cliché again.  And I don’t mean to.  But seriously—what do you do?  (Sending them cookies sounds more like a bribe than a thank you… )  One of my friends and I were discussing this at the end of the fall semester—I don’t think we came to a good answer, other than: study like crazy for the final.  Somehow that doesn’t seem to say everything we’d like to. 

If I come to any conclusions, I’ll let you know…—jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 05/11 at 06:28 PM
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