FarewellmingSloan

Not quite what I expected...

I was planning on having a ridiculous, multi-paged send-off for this blog since it will be defunct as of Sunday, but with the hectic schedule that I've had, and graduation happening and everything, it's been next to impossible to find time to sit down and write a novel about WilmingSloan and all of college. Instead, I'll write a sad (bittersweet) little story about something that just happened to me that I think sums up my sentiments toward leaving pretty well. If you want ridiculous, light-heartedness - I'll try to bring it along to my final post after Graduation. I've not been in the cheeriest moods as of late because all of my non-graduating friends (including my roommates) have all booked it out of town so I'm left sitting here alone, waiting for my parents.

So I was out on a date the other night and and I was pulling in to drop her off when I came upon a girl being pushed around in a shopping cart. It just so happens that this girl in the shopping cart was a friend of ours, one who lived in Schwartz, my old dorm, on the third floor. I had talked to her about visiting before I graduated just for old times sake, and so the timing was just too perfect, she let us in.

I had forgotten about the whole necessity of signing your guests in at the desk. What a hassle. While that was going on I just looked around at everything, it was so weird. It was like I had entered a time capsule and I was back in my sophomore year. Everything looked the same (sans banana in the elevator ceiling grate) and the kids up stairs in the common room were even watching Star Wars on the big TV - something I'm pretty sure happened a good deal when I was there. Oh! The countless hours of television I watched and Halo 2 I played on that TV back in the day.

I went back to 314 and just stood there. The door was locked because the kid living there had moved out already. I wanted to open it pretty badly - and find Brett Roach on the other side eating a can of peanuts or standing on his computer chair with a banana in his hand. I even wanted to hear the squeaking of those stinking annoying rats of his. If not Roach, I wanted Devin Dimattia to be there, sitting at his desk with his giant iPod shuffle headphones next to him, reading some obscure music blog that told him all of the latest info on random stuff that no one else cared about. I went to the water fountain down the hall and laughed at the sign the current RA had posted above it "If the fountain is clogged it is because some of you are using it to brush your teeth in. Stop this or you will be fined." Though worded a little differently, this is the same sign that Bob had over it when I was there. I walked past the mysteriously loud buzzing utility closet at the end of the hall and through the stairwell to the girls pod where I spent so much time with my friends. Laura and Lauren's room, Amelia and Lindsay's room, Caroline and Amanda's room - going back there almost affected me more than my own pod. I miss these kids, and whereas they were simply on the other side of the stairwell, now I'll likely never see them again.

The worst was when I went back into the common room. There my friend showed me where they had hung the canvas that the 05-06 residents had painted their names on. She pointed my name out to me before I could find it, painted in green and surrounded in red. Everywhere else were the names of distant memories, some fond and others not. Right next to mine, of course, was the purple paint of Caroline's signature. Then I remembered exactly where we were sitting when we painted it - at the corner of the common room. I messed up on mine and had to cover it up with the red paint, then she picked her favorite color and squashed her name in next to mine, in spite of the lack of room around it.

I miss my first two years at college because they were fun. I never worried about the future in those years, it was all about enjoying what I had and getting through the work in front of me. I had a lot of good friends and even more good memories with them. Schwartz, the building, represents that time for me. My college career can easily be split into two separate experiences - underclassman and upperclassman - both with a completely different flavor. My later experiences have been pretty great too, just very different. Going to Schwartz allowed me to visit some of the underclassman experiences that I had carefully pushed under the rug, and unearthing them was good for me.

You always hear old-timers talk about wishing they could go back for just one week, or even one day. I can sympathize, so I guess that makes me an old-timer. It would be nice to lay awake at night and have a philosophical discussion with Roach - or watch an old chick flick with the girls (though I hated it then), even to read the stupid poetry and writing on the bathroom stalls again and just KNOW that I was still there - that I still had time to be young and in college and soak up the experience. It would be nice.

But what I have is nice. And what I'll have in a year will be nice too, God willing. I will miss this campus so much, but what I really miss has long-since left me - transferred out to other schools, graduated and moved-on, or simply faded away in an apartment on the other side of town. I miss those people and the times we had together. I miss being a college kid.

...

But I'll get over it.