MMX

Its winding down to the end here at Catholic University and I'm meeting it with mixed emotions. This past week has been a blur. But a good blur. We finished with senior week yesterday and spent today packing. Senior week was a week long event that we bought tickets to. It included a picnic, baseball game, casino night, movies on the mall and a dinner cruise on the Potomac. Add in the unofficial after parties and this week has flown by. I'm starting to realize that most schools, strangely enough, do not do senior week. I feel bad for those people. Because, for me at least, senior week has been an awesome and completely unique opportunity to spend a week with the entire senior class, reminiscing and making new memories, without the distraction of classes, finals or underclassmen (not to sound pretentious). It has been a final bonding experience for us and I know without hesitation that we've had some of our best times this week. I'm sure its because we're high on life, living without a care in the world and feel like we're invincible.
It probably also has to do with the fact that none of us is really willing to acknowledge the fact that after Saturday.... most of us may never see each other again. Sure, we'll keep in touch with and see out close group of friends, but what about the people on the fringes of our close groups? The people you don't hang out with every weekend but that you've had classes with for years and who share your major. Those are the people that we're all going to lose touch with. This sense of family and community that we have will be gone. The safety net that we've been living in for the past four years is going to disappear and, while we experience this to a certain extent in high school, college graduation is the complete ending of a chapter of our lives. I still see my high school friends around town and we had the summer to prepare and say goodbye. That's not the case here. Come Sunday morning, I'm packing up my car, driving over the Taylor Street bridge and when CUA disappears from my rear view mirror.... its over. I'm not coming back and I know I haven't fully processed it yet.
And I don't want to sound depressing. Graduation is beyond exciting. I'm thrilled with the prospect of it all. It's what we've spent four years working towards. To be out on the basilica mall on Saturday and have my diploma handed to me, with all my friends right beside me, will be one of the best feelings in the world. It just means a chapter of my life is ending. It's bittersweet.
The end of one chapter, though, brings about the start of another. I'm anxious and excited to start Teach for America, but I have my hesitations. I find myself sitting around questioning if I have what it takes to move to a new city I don't know, with people I don't know and start something so completely new and foreign. Then I remember that I've already done that--four years ago when I moved to DC and started college with 800 strangers. And now those strangers are my best fiends... my family and I'm clinging desperately to any little piece of normalcy in a vain attempt to try and reassure myself that it'll all be alright. And while I'm sure, in time, I will feel the same way about Charlotte and my Teach for America corps members, right now I'm just trying to keep two feet planted firmly on the ground and take everything that life is throwing at me. Hopefully, when its all said and done, I'm still standing.
For all the complaining I do about this school (and we all do a fair amount of it), it's given me some great things. Amazing friends, the confidence to go do what I know I'm supposed to be doing, the ability to know what a real sense of community and belonging feels like and the hope that I will be able to find that again where I'm going. Do I want this to end? No. But do I look back on the last four years and know that they've shown me how to do things I never thought I could? Yes.

The Fighting Okra

Let me first begin with a post I received on my facebook wall from my roommate about an hour ago. It reads:

 Kaitlyn Boyle, I am very sorry that I gave you such a hard time about being a Fighting Okra. Looks like I will be one too.

Now, this would be the same roommate from small town PA, who has spent the greater part of this last semester harassing me about having to spend the summer at Delta State University in Cleavland, MS. But, as of yesterday, she'll be spending the summer there too. So there! HAH!

She was accepted into Teach for America's South Louisiana Corps to teach high school science. When she told me this, I first asked if she's going to buy a riverboat. She said no. I then asked her if she was going to visit Captain Ted, our really awesome swamp tour guide from spring break. She said yes. So, in my book, its all good. 

It'll definitely be great to be at institute together because we'll be able to hang out a bit on the weekends (aka, I'm stealing yo car!!). Plus, we'll each make friends in our own corps that we can introduce the other too so I could see both of us getting to know people that we may not have otherwise gotten to meet because we're in different regions. Definitely a good thing. 

In other news, I have to apply to UNC-Charlotte by the end of next week. I also have to take the GRE by the end of May. And I've got tone more information to go through for Teach for America. And no time to go through it. With 10 days and 6 major papers left (plus 4 finals), its going to be pretty insane from now until... I'm not sure when. Maybe things will slow down by Christmas. If I'm lucky. 

Guided Insanity

It's midterms week here at Catholic. You would think after four years and seven semesters we would be used to this. Like every other year, though, the panic has set in. And the snowpocalypse didn't help things. The assignments that would have been spreed over last week, this and next week have been jammed into the next two. That means this week I have three papers due (Mon, Tues and Thurs) and next week I've got three midterms (Mon, Tues and Thurs) and a take home being handed out on Wednesday thats due the week we get back. Really, who assigns work to be due when we get back from spring break?!?! Add the stress of the Praxis coming up in three weeks, and I'm sitting at my desk, silently freaking out.
Let's not forget the outside factors that we're all freaking out about. Graduation. The fast approaching end to college. As ready as I am for it to be over, I've become closer with some friends this past year and I wish we had another year to all be together. Never mind that my mom called me the other day to tell me she's booked my graduation party for Saturday of Memorial Day. She thought I'd want to know so I can invite my friends. Wait, let them get out their planners THREE MONTHS EARLY!
Everything's going to be fine though. I've got my John Mayer collection on repeat, I've got a soda and very little need for sleep. Besides... two weeks from now I'll be in New Orleans, sitting at Pat O'briens on Bourbon Street, sipping a hurricane. That's what I have to keep reminding myself.
Next year I'm going to remember this when I'm teaching. I'll make sure to try and find out what my student's schedules are like when assigning projects. And no homework over vacation, either. For them, or me.