Thursday, December 17, 2009

Statistics and Shortbread

It's 12:05am and I'm taking a much needed mental break from the monotony of statistics homework and studying. There's a savage internal debate going on right now: stay up ridiculously late and study, or get up ridiculously early and study? Hmm...my body is saying "go to sleep", yet I know that come morning I will loath anything remotely mathematical. Not very conducive to hard-core studying. Maybe it'll just be a late night. Again.

A strange part of me is feeling really, really sad about this semester ending. I have made some very fun friendships that, though facebook helps, without seeing them every other day are going to be hard to keep up.
Dear, sweet, quirky friends to whisper jokes with, pass notes with, rant and rave about impossible homework assignments with, smile with, study with...this is a week of saying goodbyes. I really don't like goodbyes. Really really don't.
And yet, every day I'm saying goodbye to a different classroom full of a couple new, great friends. Sure, I might see them sometime on campus, I can write on their facebook wall...but it's so not the same. They're moving on in their college career, and I continue along in mine. Our worlds coincided for a short, sweet 16 weeks and now it's time to say goodbye.

Isn't that a interesting idea? You get to share someone's world for a brief snippit of time (in this case, a semester), and then they're gone. Their world continues, their life's timeline goes on, and though you perhaps left a fingerprint on that timeline, you have exited. You get to marvel at the clouds, or study together, or share the giddiness of an "A" together for four months and then...it's over. Goodbye, interesting person. Goodbye, you fascinating life full of intrigue and possibility. Goodbye, you bundle of excitement and potential. Goodbye, friend.

After one particular final today, one young man looked me square in the eyes, shook my hand and said, "Well, thanks for the semester. It was cool to know you."

It was cool to know you too.

Have a nice life.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Si,Que Pena! Carpe Diem.

J said...

I know what you mean. I made a friend in my English class and outside of that class, I never see her. She is on my Facebook, but it just stinks knowing I won't get to talk to her. Hopefully I can meet up with her sometime in the future... I like to keep friends that I make, y'know?

Di said...

It gets better when you get to those upper division courses, Risa. Then you have your "major" friends for the long haul which can be both fun and...sanctifying (-:

Happy Christmas Break,
Mom Wheeler