interruption

I interrupt this posting of my urban studies paper with the following earth-shattering news:

Today is the last Monday of Senior Year of college. That means, therefore, that it is the last Monday of my collegiate career. As is appropriate, I think, it is windy, slightly overcast, and rainy. It's the perfect picture of the classic Monday blues. [That is if a windy, sightly overcast and rainy day could be called perfect...]

But this invokes even more blue-ish feelings than the traditional set arising from the early-morning, "ohgoshit'smonday" sentiment that accompanies every other, rather ordinary Monday morning. This is my last day of Monday classes.

Period.

Just saying that feels like a clap of thunder. But at the same time, that sentence seems so ordinary. Mondays are ordinary, classes are ordinary: it's that one little word, "last," that takes the statement from the everyday to what seems like the end of the world.

I could sit here and ponder what this day, the last day of Monday classes, means for my life, for the end of college, for the "end of an era." But in all honesty it seems forced. I know I'm going to graduate. I know that I will never again be enrolled at Wheaton College. (Well, I hope anyways.) I know that in less than two weeks now I will walk across that stage, smile, grab my not-yet-diploma and probably not know what to do with myself.

All right, it's sad. It's definitely sad. I'm sitting here at my internship trying not to tear up when I think about how my college career is at an end. It all went by so fast, and it seems like the end is going by even faster. Two weeks. Two weeks is nothing. The last two weeks went by like lightning. Yet these two weeks seem to stretch out before me like a never-ending highway. I don't know if that's because of all the things I have to do [find a job, finish my classes, take exams, decide on grad school, on the summer, go through my stuff, etc]...or if it's because I know it's the end.

I want to treasure every moment. I want every moment, every "last moment," to be something worthwhile and memorable. Something happy, joyous: something nostalgic. But life's not like that. The end wouldn't be so fitting if it was so much different from the whole. The end is ordinary, just like life: endings and beginnings happen every day and we survive them all, more or less unscathed.

So going into these last two weeks, this last day of Monday classes (on which, ironically, I am not going to be attending class...), I'm going to be consistently reminded it's the end. It's impossible for me not to - that's how I am wired. But I've still got a life to live. I am going to treasure every moment. But I'm going to treasure them all - the ordinary and the not-so-ordinary. When I think back on my Wheaton experience, after it's all over (in less than two weeks! oh here come the tears...), I'm going to cherish the little moments. The laughter, the excitement, the joy, and even the uncertainty, confusion, the little irritations, because those moments are what make life life. Those moments are what makes us human, those moments are a testament to how much we've grown, and those are the moments that remind me to cherish the times when laughter is free-flowing.

As I look out the window a little patch of sunlight is breaking through the clouds. On this most-fittingly overcast Monday, the bluest of blue days, a patch of thinly-veiled sunlight is all too appropriate. It's totally a cliche and ridiculously cheesy but I think it represents my sentiments, and the weather, exactly - the end is only the beginning. Wheaton's at an end, but "real life" is just starting. And that's exciting.

So here's two the next two weeks, which I'm sure will be a blur of tears/packing/studying/eating/notenoughsleep/joy/laughter - oh I hope so much laughter. Though my eyes I think will be permanently moistened and even now I'm like a teary time-bomb waiting to explode at the tiniest mention of something nostalgic...

let's charge laughing.