Facebook tells me that, four years ago today, I graduated from Vassar. To commemorate that, here’s pretty much the first thing I ever wrote, when I first discovered my love for writing (outside of the multitude of papers written at Vassar). Written around a year after I graduated, this, too, was inspired by something I saw on Facebook.
The schedule for Senior Week 2013 at Vassar has just been released, and Facebook is flooded with statuses lamenting that graduation is nearly here. It is only when I read these that it hits me – it has been nearly a year since I graduated. I got so caught up in moving back home, getting a job, adjusting to life after college that time flew. I lived without realizing it, without noticing how much time has gone by, without it clicking in my head that I have been at this for a year. I can no longer say that I just graduated from Vassar; I lost the right to say that a few months back. Soon, I will no longer even be able to say that I recently graduated from Vassar; in a few weeks’ time, that right will belong to another set of students.
I avoid thinking about my graduation as much as possible, as it only brings back bad memories. Whenever asked about graduation day, I describe it as the worst day of my life. It’s a tad bit dramatic, but I stick by it. Everyone says graduation is bittersweet, but I feel like I only experienced the bitter, none of the sweet. It might be because I have always hated change, I tend to get used to a place, a situation, a group of people, and want to hold onto it for as long as I can. It might be because I was one of the few people who were moving away to a different country, uncertain about their return. This was not the case with the rest of my friends, who were at ease with the fact that they were a car, train, or at most a short plane ride away from seeing most of these people or this place again, for whom it wouldn’t require months of planning or a very expensive plane ticket.
As I am reminded of the fact that this very day is fast approaching for the Class of 2013, all those memories and emotions and feelings come flooding back. Of all the speeches made during the commencement ceremony (and believe me, there were many), the lines that I remember best are from our class president’s speech. She said something to the effect of that we weep and lament and behave like we are the first class ever to graduate, but there were hundreds of classes before us and there will be hundreds after us. Till date, I cannot find a more apt way to put it. For weeks after graduation, I remember being upset, not being able to imagine life without Vassar or knowing what I was going to do with myself. Then somewhere down the line, I got over it. I can’t pinpoint when exactly or even how, but I slowly got used to being a graduate, to being known as something other than a student, as I had been known my entire life. True to that graduation speech, it is now time for 600-odd students to feel how I felt one year ago.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t miss school, especially today, as I think back on my graduation and the months leading up to it. I am often asked whether I am happy to be home, or if I would have been happier living in America. Whenever I am asked this, I remember that what I miss about college is college itself, not America. College allows us to be both adults, with vast amounts of freedom and responsibility, and children, making foolish decisions that are followed by foolish behavior. College builds around us a unique, safe, and special atmosphere, which no future time period in our life can replicate.
This being said, I do feel that college was able to be such a wonderful time in our lives only because we experienced it for the right amount of time. Whether three years, four years, or five, we loved college because it had to end. There were plenty of times during those four years when I hated it and couldn’t wait to graduate. We tended to increasingly forget those bad times as we approached graduation, because who wants to remember the bad when something is ending or has ended (aptly termed graduation goggles by Marshall Eriksen on HIMYM). If college had gone on any longer, we might not have loved it so much. What makes me say this? Well, if I were given the option to go back to school, I’m not sure that I would take it, despite maintaining that Vassar was one of the best decisions I ever made.
Upon hearing that graduation speech and for weeks afterward, I often wondered how all those classes that had graduated before us had come to terms with it. Now, 11 months after graduation, it is finally starting to make a little more sense.