morning music, III.

Hello, sweet friends. I hope you're having the most wonderful week and that you have plenty to look forward to in the coming weekend. I made my first morning music playlist about one year ago and I talked about how surreal it was that my final spring semester as an undergraduate had just begun. It was surreal, I still remember how I felt. I find myself feeling that way again this year, but it's a little different. Although I've been chugging along as a graduate student since the summer, it only recently hit me that I am now almost officially done with my collegiate career. While everyone was feeling those bittersweet pangs of finishing up last year, I knew I had another year ahead of me, so it softened the blow. Now those feelings are staring me right in the face and they're a reality. I will never be in college again. It is highly unlikely that I will take any other classes at a university and it's even more unlikely that I will take them on this campus. What a strange and empty feeling.

I grew up on this campus. I learned so much about myself. I learned what it meant to exist without the immediate, physical presence of my family. I met new people. Learned new things. Built my foundation to have a successful career in a field I am passionate about. I will soon leave this place behind. This campus will be nothing but a memory. A place I will have called home for five years will be an imprint in my brain and take up real estate in my heart, but it won't have a  tangible presence in my life anymore. The stages of life are so strange, aren't they? They ask us to look back at the things we've accomplished in those hours, those years, those moments. We take the memories we want to remember and we stuff the rest way, way down in the depths of our hearts where they will eventually be forgotten.

So many times I wished I was elsewhere. I struggled to determine where I fit in in such a big, gaping, diverse place. Now it seems like it flew by. Recently, I've been thinking about what I'll be doing 5, 6, 7 months from now. I think about fast forwarding past this part of my life because sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes it asks too much of me and I am tired. What a sad, sad thing to think, though. I am almost done here, wrapping up these years of my life and the last thing I need to do is wish them away. They'll be gone before I know it, so for now I'll listen to my music as I get ready for my day and I'll remember how sweet and wonderful it is to be a college student. Such a small snippet of life that shaped such a big piece of who I am now. xo, R.