Last Semester
<<2006-01-23 - 5:30 p.m.>> Reed College the first day of my last semester. Anxious. Fingers and heart and breath ticking through requirement-fulfilling class with freshmen (please, let me graduate) and checking mail (list of credits: it seems I will probably graduate) and retrieving packages (my mother sends vintage Samsonite suitcases—it is unclear why) andbuying books, standing anxious in those beginning-of-semester bookstore and mailroom lines like let me out, looking at the knots of underclassmen like who are you? and vacating quickly. My suitcase and the brooch on the lapel of my wool coat seemed to inspire chivalry. From non-Reedies. Bus drivers. Man in suit in Starbucks. I thought of myself as wide-eyed and arriving in the big city on a train from Iowa. Looking up at the buildings clutching my broadbrimmed hat. (Cindy Sherman.)I heard people talk about this feeling, friends soon to graduate, but I didn't expect it rush in so soon and so hard. Don't belong here. How did that happen? All I want to do is get through this semester and get out. I like my friends and my life and I suddenly I want those things to have nothing to do with the giggling and esotericism of Reed. Sudden and sharp and visceral: no. This is my last semester of college. << - >> |