What once seemed to be surreal and distant is now less than 2 weeks away.

I will become what I expected, a college graduate, but how exactly I got from there to here dumbfounds me. It’s not because I don’t believe I should be graduating or I had some monumental struggle in my 4.5 years in college, nope, far from it. What does dumbfound me is that the “now” is actually here.

It snuck up on me. I could reminice about my first years in college and the unsurpassed freedom I had from major responsibility. But many times, reflecting reminds me of a time of innocence, before life was invaded with plans, to-do lists, requirements…before I “grew up.” I had little to worry about besides running, school and relationships.

Now, everyone wants to know what you’re doing after college. And just as friends before me, and the friends before them, and the friends before them, I will leave. Over the last 4.5 years I’ve met so many people I can’t even begin to recall even a fraction of them all. Yet when I do leave, I will take with me but a small, handful of friends. Is that right? I sit and think that it’s almost a waste. Hundreds if not thousands of conversations and introductions…for what, why?

Some say that every interaction shapes you in some form or another. Perhaps…

In just a few more months…I, like countless others before me, will “go into the real world.” And after a couple years, everyone I knew in college will have passed through the revolving door that is college and the cycle will continue. It never stops.

Fast forward four and a half years later and the freedom that embraced me at Dieterich Hall my freshman year, embraces me yet again. The realization that I can do and go anywhere is a vortex of thought and emotion that swirls upstairs everyday.

Can you hear the symphony?

• Past Writings