college was a strange time. it was more scary and more exciting and more challenging and more intimidating and more fun than anything else i've ever experienced, anything i could have imagined. i learned so much in just four years! and those four years flew by. from the first day of ninth grade til high school graduation, the time went by more quickly than i expected. but i did feel like i'd put in all the time, and so although i was a little surprised at how quickly graduation rolled around, i wasn't shocked. but from the first day of my freshman year until Commencement 363, it seems like at most only a year or two could have gone by. i remember at the end of the first semester of freshman year, my roommates and i realized that we were 1/8 of the way through our college careers. and from that moment, i think i spent too much time saying to myself, "but i haven't learned enough to be one-eighth of the way through!" or halfway through, or three-quarters of the way through. maybe if i'd stayed in the moment a bit more, looking ahead instead of back, it would have helped...but maybe not.

when i thought as a freshman that i was so strong, that i had survived the worst...who knew that it would take til halfway through senior year for me to admit that i wasn't strong enough to go it alone? when i thought i'd end senior year as lonely as i'd begun freshman year...who knew i'd have the most wonderful senior week-and-a-half that anyone could ever imagine? when i worried that i would never be able to change...who knew that i would surprise myself with how different a person i was by the time of Commencement?


june 1999