Goodbye
So this is it: I'm going. In two hours I'll be driving home.
It feels good, I guess, but it also feels terrible.
For the past three weeks, the people here have really been my family -- and I say that honestly. There've been moms and dads and annoying little sisters (though no one as good at it as Corinne) and cousins and brothers even (I've never had those before) and it's been good. I've never really had an experience like this before, having to meet all these people and then three weeks later have to tell them goodbye.
Don't get me wrong -- I want to go home -- but at the same time...I don't want to leave here. Leaving...that means I might not come back.
That's really the root of it: when I leave Terra this morning, I'll never know if I'm coming back. Okay, not never -- but December 15 (the day Stanford notifices early action applicants) seems too far away.
Bill Calder has it right when he jokingly calls the time we spent here the "Terra Era." That's what it felt like, so that's what it should be remembered as. There were so many moments of it that mean so much and will continue to mean that much, whether or not Stanford becomes a more permanent home in the future.
There are things from yesterday I really should journal, but I don't know if I'm in the mood to relate a straight story at the moment. Let's just say there was impromptu onstage poetry in front of 200 or so people, lollipops, fountain hopping, ice cream, non-impromptu poetry readings, goodbyes.
For some reason the song "Goodbye Love" from Rent is stuck in my head now...I don't even remember how it starts, I just have the refrain going through my head. Yes, it's melodramatic (and I'm not in love with Stanford) but my time here has changed me in ways I'll probably still be finding out when I apply here and if (when?) I go here. It's big. It's bigger than I can be.
And it was good.
It feels good, I guess, but it also feels terrible.
For the past three weeks, the people here have really been my family -- and I say that honestly. There've been moms and dads and annoying little sisters (though no one as good at it as Corinne) and cousins and brothers even (I've never had those before) and it's been good. I've never really had an experience like this before, having to meet all these people and then three weeks later have to tell them goodbye.
Don't get me wrong -- I want to go home -- but at the same time...I don't want to leave here. Leaving...that means I might not come back.
That's really the root of it: when I leave Terra this morning, I'll never know if I'm coming back. Okay, not never -- but December 15 (the day Stanford notifices early action applicants) seems too far away.
Bill Calder has it right when he jokingly calls the time we spent here the "Terra Era." That's what it felt like, so that's what it should be remembered as. There were so many moments of it that mean so much and will continue to mean that much, whether or not Stanford becomes a more permanent home in the future.
There are things from yesterday I really should journal, but I don't know if I'm in the mood to relate a straight story at the moment. Let's just say there was impromptu onstage poetry in front of 200 or so people, lollipops, fountain hopping, ice cream, non-impromptu poetry readings, goodbyes.
For some reason the song "Goodbye Love" from Rent is stuck in my head now...I don't even remember how it starts, I just have the refrain going through my head. Yes, it's melodramatic (and I'm not in love with Stanford) but my time here has changed me in ways I'll probably still be finding out when I apply here and if (when?) I go here. It's big. It's bigger than I can be.
And it was good.