It still boggles my mind at how people here can brush off their cars, but fail to brush off their lights…. at night.

It’s my 2nd semester here and it brings it’s own new sets of challenges. Being 6 hours from family, 3.5 from love, an online class, an internship, and volunteer hours, study tables, class observation and a new workout regiment.  It is just so crazy to think how fast things can change.  At the completion of this semester I will be half way through grad school which is crazy.  A year from now I will be job searching.  In Michigan of course.  And I’ll be a real person.  Or at least I’m expected to be.

I know this is a change that is expected to happen, but sometimes I still wonder if this is the place I’m supposed to do it.  There are 3 things in life we are expcected to have:  love, work and friends.  Argubally a 4th is spirituality.   When one of those elements is lacking individuals can throw themselves into the two that still remain.  When one remains it is the breath and heart beat of that life.  It’s an adjustment.  It’s not stable.  When things are not balanced we adjust.  It’s called adaptation, but what do we do when there is nothing to adjust to?  The adjustment is a transition, but when there is no transition to be, then what is? I’m not adjusting, I’m dealing.

I have all of the 3 (and the arguable 4th) but I can only have one here with me.  It’s not a good feeling.  I have work.  Woo-Hoo. What keeps me going is the fact that when I’m done with school I am done being here.  When you have all of the 3 posessions but they are not actually within your reach is kind of like having nothing right?  Not for me.  It’s hope.

It is the strength to keep me pushing through.  It’s like the transition theory by Schlossberg: Move in, move through, move out. I’m moving through.  Those weekends I can get home to see my family, friends and love are some of the best weekends I know right now.  I am kind of lucky because I have motivation to return. I am apart from the most important of the 3 expectations: friends and love.  And for me having the motivation to see those things because they are not conveniently with me is what keeps me pushing through this chapter of my life.  It’s like the phrase “you never know what you have until it’s gone”.  I don’t think I ever took love, family or friends for granted before but they have only gotten more important to me.  So right now, I’m in this comfortable and functional life with only 1 of the expectations being here, because I can invest my time in work with the realization and motivation that when I am done or can take a break I get to see my friends, family and love.

Some people would call this backwards, but for me it’s the only way I would ever be doing this.  I know getting my masters is the right thing to do. But if it wasn’t for my friends, family and love I could have tossed in the towel a long time ago.  Forcing myself to do the uncomfortable with the motivation of seeing the comfortable!!!

I’m ok. I have family, I have friends, I have love, and I have work (and the arguable 4th).  What is there to complain about?

The beginning of a slow rain finds droplets scattered about the pavement.  As the rain gets heavier the pavement is unable to absorb the drops.  The rain keeps falling and falling and falling. Droplets turn to puddles, puddles turn to streams, streams turn to rivers .  Sometimes I feel like my heart is the pavement.  Able to absorb the drops but there is only so much i can absorb before it turns into a weighted puddle.  How long can I hold on before the rain turns to a stream?  The rain flows into the nearest storm drain, allowing the rain to be managable, yet still I find myself covered in rain.

Living with it and letting it go.

But the emergency drain can only handle so much, and it can only drain so quickly.  When it rains it pours huh?  Pours so hard I cannot manage the rain? Then what?

Flooding.  Storm drain is worthless.

Then we wait. Waiting for that moment when the drain can catch up again, letting the rain flow around and settling down.  Pools.  Sitting, and wait, the longer we wait the more damage is done, harder to repair. Nevertheless repairs must be made.

Water Damage.

Tossing and turning,  the rain is letting up, storm drain is catching up.  Those rivers turn to streams, streams to puddles and puddles to wet pavement.  Now to repair the damage.

“Rain, rain go away, come again another day.”

There’s lots of rain right now, we can’t let it pool.  Let that storm drain handle the water.  The rain falls on you, you absorb it until you can’t any longer then you deal with some and send it away, don’t like it fester, Water damage only creates more problems down the road.

I lay here listening to the rain, it’s puddling, but every once in a while, we need to put on our rain boots and make a big splash.

For far too much.

Too long to explain.

I guess I’ll start here. Here is where it has been too long. Here has created too long. It’s not the then where I want to return. I want then to become there ahead.

It’s been far to long since I’ve felt at home.

I’ll be back. You can bet on it.

Bad things happen to everyone. It is an inevitable reality for everyone in this world, yet we all have hope.  We hope for the best and look forward to positive outcomes, yet in the back of our minds we sit here being realistic knowing that that very same inevitable reality posing hope can present the same result of pain.  Some people call this preparing for the worst, I call it being realistic.  There is no harm in being realistic but can being realistic take away from the ability to have hope?  Or will there always be some part of us, internally wired as human beings, to look for the good and hope?

They pretty much go hand in hand.  If you look at the word awful, the root of the word awful is awe.  It is contradictory in and of itself.  It has the ability to be used in a good context but it can also be used in the bad. In both situations isn’t someone always left in awe?  I guess that’s what makes the good things so great.  We are just preparing for the worst knowing that realistically  that it can and could happen, it’s a good thing.  When the good happens against all our expectations we are left in awe. Speechless.

Kind of why miracles are miracles.

Realistically hoping, preparing for reality.

trust my heart or my head?

heart.

no… welp!

head?

wait did i decide on heart or head…..?

I guess that’s real life, huh?

First of all senior days are completely over rated. I have spent 3 years prior to this being on campus for Senior Days, but this is the first as a senior (clearly). But honestly, they all feel the same, except for the fact that this year I actually went to graduation rehearsal.

I thought today might be a longer post but it might be short, who knows lets roll with it and see where it goes.

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Tonight I was filling out a survey and it asked me which teacher/educator was the most influential in my experience at Albion. I honestly couldn’t answer it. Honestly. There is no one professor that had a more profound impact than any of the rest.  They all did, in some way or another. There were classes I didn’t enjoy, and professors that I didn’t enjoy, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have an impact on me.  Perhaps I realized I didn’t want to study Spanish anymore, or take classes that are primarily activity & group learning based. But I still learned something. I learned what I didn’t like, and quite frankly that is profound. It’s like that whole internship mentality that people have.  Get and internship, and if you don’t like it, then you learned that’s what you don’t want to do.

Right. As if it were that easy.

But for me I find my experiences here at Albion different and unique of all the rest.  Now, probably every degree candidtae could probably say that same statement tomorrow, but they aren’t wrong.  Everyones time here was spend differently, studying different things, worry about different stressers or relationship problems, the matter of the fact that even though we all come to this one place that we all identify as Albion and we know what “product” we will be we are all different and we all had different experiences.  This place is not an institution.

Albion.

Learning is an experience.

I bet you could ask anyone here what their most influential moment at Albion was – it’s not anything related to education. Why? Because it honestly doesn’t matter what you learn in some 101 class that fills a graduation requirement. It is the interactions with the professors, other students and yourself in that class that is going to be the most influential.  Who gives a damn if you got a 4 point in the class if you didn’t learn anything… In this day and age it is more to learn the practical, and how to learn not just the facts.  My media professor stated one day that “you are all being trained for jobs that don’t exist”.  Meaning that over the next 4-6 years a good portion of us will have jobs and job titles at companies that didn’t exist 3, 4 5 and even 10 years ago. How do we know it’s all valid?  How do we know that the training we are getting now (in college) is going to be adequate for a job we know nothing about?

We don’t.

We are trained to learn, experience and explore those experiences around us, for those are going to be the ones that last a lifetime.  I am not, by any means, trying to devalue my degree. No, my degree is a representation of the field where I learned the most valuable life skills, work integrity and relationship development.  How to work with different people, coping with their abilities and different ticks that just piss you off is not something you will need to learn on the first day of work. BECAUSE YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW! This diploma that I am getting tomorrow is the field where I learned the skills through.

Me. Music (French Horn), and Communication Studies and Religious Studies. And I’m not going to grad school for any of that. OOPS!
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We were the kings and queens of promise, we were the victims of ourselves…These lessons that we’ve learned here have only just begun. – 30SM

Goodnight!

Ironic?

How much work we actually do for one small probably only an 8 x 10 sheet off paper with fancy old english writing saying we did all that.  Hrm. We come to this place with notebooks, printer paper, pens, pencils and all the supplies to develop something like a 2304985734 page paper, and we walk away with one piece of parchment. All this work we do, the internships had, papers turned in, classes failed, all-nighters pulled, drunken escapades, and so much more, and apparently we’re have now become the better qualified leaders of tomorrow?  I don’t know what does it completely – but I can tell you that there is no way it is only the classes that get us there. I love this place, but I can honestly tell you it is not because of the classes I stressed out about, the professors I did or didn’t like, the 7am work outs because I couldn’t do it during my already scheduled out day, nope.

It’s the 7am drumline rehearsals, the late nights spent working, the nights spent on the kitchen floor talking with sisters till 4 am, the band concerts, the satisfaction of a great tour.  I guess I kind of fell in love with this place. And I guess now, I don’t actually have to leave.  And I’m glad.  There is no way I am going to become the eternal student and stay working here the rest of my life, my ass would be sore because I know some people would kick it if I did.

So, here’s to an amazing 4 years, and here’s to an anticipated 3 months that have long been awaited and are much needed.
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“Place your order now cause some other time is right around the clock. You can stand in line, it finally begins just around the clock” – JM
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Seriously  - I think it’s been raining for a week straight.  It’s not cool, but hey, if the clouds empty out now perhaps there will be no more rain left and we can have graduation outside? k? k.

I need to workout more – I have been slacking.  I’m pretty sure I can blame it on finals week or something about the end of the semester with too many things to do and not enough time. People to see. Money to be earned. Sleep to be had. Quite frankly – why can’t I cut something else out, but I guess I can’t really cut out showering to work out. All I’m saying is all year, things sped by real quick, there wasn’t enough time for anything. But now it’s 2 weeks from the end, time is dragging on by, but I still don’t have enough time. And I’m pretty sure I’m on the struggle bus (again) today. Moral of that story, time is (relatively) slow right now, and I still don’t have enough time. I need a nap too.

I have a future thought, so I guess I don’t have to worry about that, I know where I’m going, it’s just how much I have to get done before I get there.
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It has been a week of lasts: band concert, chapel, KD meeting (I missed, cuz of band), initiation, composite photo, last classes, last senior willing, last (undergraduate) finals, and I’m pretty sure I missed some. But over the next 10 days and into 3 months it will be a time of firsts. First: professional job, day as an alumna of Albion and KD, graduate classes, first apartment, and I’m sure there will be more along the way.  Which is more exciting? I honestly don’t know.  There are thoughts swimming around in my head that could push me either way.  When I say I’m excited – am I just saying it because that’s what I should be saying, because honestly I’m terrified. But what am I scared about…? Am I actually scared about the firsts, or am I more scared of the changes that will take places to get me there.  Changes in location, knowledge, relationships.

I am at a loss, I guess.
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“With whispered songs of hope that come toward my ears and stick inside my head andhold at bay the fear, the droplets on the pane reverberate the same thing” - Mae

E85 has been dubbed as a more “environmentally friendly” fuel source, but many do not even understand the benefits or non-benefits of this fuel.  E85 when burned and used to run a vehicle it emits drastically less CO2 emissions than your average gasoline burning vehicle. Today, E85 is considered to cost (on average) about the same (or lower) amount as gasoline, but other than it’s benefits for the environment it is not a whole lot different.  E85 is known for getting significantly less gas mileage than any other gasoline burning car.  So if we think about this, yes – filling up with E85 will cost less to fill up, but owners will be finding themselves filling up more oven due to the lower mileage. No – E85 is not necessarily beneficial to the consumers pocket book, but it has less CO2 emissions than other cars. Is it really worth it?

Apparently I own one of these!

1) Avatar in Class – yes no lie, we are literally watching Avatar in my class.

2) It’s almost over – although I’m not leaving which is the better part of this post.
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I’m done. Wtih Albion. Yet I don’t have to leave. Literally the next 16 days, especially the last will be a bunch of bittersweet symphonies playing in my head. Being done with undergrad rids me of this safety blanket I have held onto for so long. Yet, when I am done I will embark on a life that I have been looking forward to for about 9 months now.

This past year has been crazy. At this point last year I was sitting with a friend discussing with a friend how we’d live together. I would start a job that would leave a mark so vivid it would push me to reach new limits, create new goals, and develop some of the best relationships I have seen in a long time.

I feel closer with my friends than I have ever felt before. Upon these next 16 days some will leave for good, and others will leave for a little while. But here I am postponing that indefinite departure. I am sorry to have to say good bye, but to some I am only saying hello.  It has been a year of being a student but wanting to move on from that life, but not moving on from this place. I don’t have to.  I am sorry to be saying goodbye but I am looking forward to the new hellos, and preparing myself for those goodbyes which I already imagine will be harder than those of 16 days out. Things will change, for those who return, I will have already left, but it’s the cycle and how it has to be.

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Cheers to the unavoidable bittersweet future!

16 days.

On this rolling home, time goes by so slow. I’d get off but it’s my rolling home. -TH