A Final Week

Katie D.

June 6, 2010 - 11:17 PM

This is it, folks. The final countdown. Exactly a week from today I'll have graduated from the Honors College, and will be hours away from the official UO graduation time. My family will be here, and all my friends' families. Actually, exactly one week from this moment we'll be having a big old party at my house, dancing out the graduation celebrations.

It's exciting, and sad. Endings and beginnings. Growing potential and the end of an era.

My friends Maddy has a distressing new habit of saying "everything's ending" every time she remembers another bit of college life she'll be losing soon. Sometimes that's multiple times an hour. I never know what to say. There is no simple answer. Yes, almost everyone is moving away, ending college, saying goodbye to campus and college friends. But no, everything's also starting. A whole new set of adventures and plans and futures. And also there are so many memories, so many friendships.

There's so much to celebrate right now. My last day of class as an undergrad was Thursday. I have two final essays and one take-home final standing between me and graduation. One week left. That means one of each day: such a limited space to have all the wonderful times with these people I love so dearly. Time being short makes each day so precious. I felt this way at the end of my time studying abroad: once you can start counting the individual days, everything becomes so intense and so deeply appreciated. It also makes crazy plans possible. Skydiving, for instance. You don't do something like that in the middle of a month for no good reason. You balance it perfectly between a thesis defense and the graduation ceremony. You savor the timing, take your life in your hands, and leap.

There are many things that have to happen between now and the time that my friends start leaving for their summer plans (a week from tomorrow). Tonight we watched the final chapter of the Battlestar Galactica saga, together in my living room, just like old times. We also have to watch Anchorman, since that was a great favorite of freshman year. There are places we have to visit, restaurants to eat a last meal together.

Most important, to me anyway, is the photoshoot. Freshman year we took an incredible set of pictures of the eight of us all together: the members of The Group, together around the campus area. We took over a hundred, and they are some of my favorite pictures of all time. They helped me through my homesickness when I was in Chile, and have provided a constant place to hold my memories. These are my friends, my college family. So on Thursday we'll be recreating the photoshoot. The steps of Chapman Hall, the courtyard of the Museum of Art, the footbridge across the Wilamette to Autzen Stadium, and the spot down by the river, under the trees. Four years later and still friends, still a family.

Another milestone fast approaching: the release of Turned magazine. We will finally, finally have the printed copies by Friday. I can't wait. Seriously, I am constantly on edge, wanting to see the final product of all this joyful work. I am so amazingly proud already.

To balance all of the stresses of everything coming to a close, I've resumed my old reading habits. I used to be the master of the multitasking, jumping back and fourth between three pages of assigned reading to five minutes with my novel. It might not be a great strategy for finals week, but it's a necessary and (I must say) a well-deserved break. I'm reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and I love it. Kingsolver is my favorite author by far. I think she is brilliant, funny, honest, and a deeply committed working for peace, social justice, and the health of our natural world. This latest novel is much more of a historical fiction piece than her others: figures from Mexican history and art movements keep popping up, surprising me with their familiarity. It's a beautiful novel, and will now forever have this connotation of the final week of my undergraduate studies. Other books I've read are associated with travels, birthdays, best friends, UO classes. But this one will forever be linked with this moment in my life: the bittersweet transition from a joyful four years of studies to my next step, the next adventures.

A final week. There will be lots to report. Stay tuned.