mental manifestations

I was never good at saying goodbyes. I have now completed my undergraduate degree in Computer Science from RIT after five long years of hard work, co-ops, and fun. And yet, I know that life will still go on. I had this same experience when some of my friends graduated before me. I had this same feeling right before I moved to Maryland. I had this feeling before I left Maryland to move back to Rochester. Still, saying goodbye never gets any easier.

I suppose it’s a good thing to reflect on the things since I was a freshman in college and see how I’ve progressed. I know that I will have plenty of pictures to remind me of all the memories and experiences I’ve had. I’ve become a little smarter. I’ve learned new things, good things, bad things, and different things. I’ve become slightly more fit. I’ve become a greater person than I was when I graduated high school, but it never really feels any different.

The epic feeling dissipated quickly after my ceremony in much the same way it did after my high school graduation. Everything passes so quickly and there is never a good chance to let it soak in. I received one of my project grades only fifteen minutes after my ceremony ended from a professor in my department who was at the ceremony. I can’t imagine what faculty feel, but I would bet it has become a very common occurrence for them.

I can’t find the right words to convey what I want. To sum up my entire college experience in a few mere paragraphs just feels too cheap to do it justice. You can’t capture that sense in recount the same way you experience life live in reality. A casual drive around campus makes me a lot more emotional than sitting here in my apartment trying to let go. All the preparation in the world can never prepare you for the reality of life. The books my mom bought me about college after I graduated from high school did not help me much at all. A lot of life I had to take as it came along and learn from it.

It was all the people that helped me grow into who I am now. Going to college was vastly different than going to high school. There were so many people from different backgrounds, and I managed to carve out my niche and find a good group of people that I call my friends. Even the people in passing, ones I never got to know very well, from jobs, classes, or clubs, contributed to the madness of college whether that madness was fun, laughter, anger, or sadness.

At the end, it never feels like I did enough. It never feels like I tried hard enough. I could have done more. I could have done better. But life will always have more time for me to make up for everything I didn’t do. I do not expect to see some people for a long time just like I didn’t expect to see a lot of my high school class for a while. Letting go is hard to do, but it doesn’t mean I have to forget. My life doesn’t have to end here at graduation. It’s just a period of transition. And life is nothing but a neverending, continuous period of transition.