Memories in Limbo
Leaving Vanderbilt at the end of every spring semester is bitter-sweet. I’m faced with saying good-bye to my friends who are seniors, saying less painful byes to the people I’ll be seeing again in four months, packing up my room, and walking around campus knowing that the year’s adventures are coming to an end. Now that I’m back home I get to look back at many of the great memories that I’ve made at Vanderbilt in the same way I’ve been able to for the past two summers: knowing that next year’s memories and adventures will be very, very different from what I’ve experienced this year but knowing that they’ll all take place within the context of Vanderbilt in some way, shape, or form. However, this is the last summer that I get to look back on the memories of the past year and look forward to the memories of next year in this way because next year I’ll be a senior.
This summer brings with it a strange period of “limbo” in which I’m a senior (eek!) but senior year hasn’t really started. Ever since the end of my last final this past semester I’ve had a little voice in the back of my head that keeps reminding me that from now on the next year is going to be a year of lasts: last summer home between two academic years of college, last first day of classes, last sorority formal, last Alternative Spring Break (however, in exchange for “lifer status” aka going on ASB all four years of college), my last Awakening Retreat with University Catholic, and the list goes on and on.
I could be really sad about this. However, I choose to be excited about this because life at Vanderbilt is truly exciting. I see this as an opportunity of one more year to go to all the great food places I STILL haven’t visited in Nashville, go to a concert at the Ryman, visit the Country Music Hall of Fame, go to a bar on Broadway, run the full St. Jude Country Music Marathon, and FINALLY go on a Commodore Cruise. So far my last three years at Vanderbilt have been very formative in lots of unexpected ways that were far from how I imagined college would change me throughout four years. Although it will be a year of many lasts, I look forward to it also being a year of many exciting firsts that are testament to the fact that there is more to do in Nashville and at Vanderbilt that can be fit into four years.
