I think that I'm using my crazy, bitter grad student persona to hide the real truth. I'm sad. I'm really truly sad about leaving. Not sad in the sense that I'm going to sabotage my own efforts. For sure I'm getting the heck out of here. No doubt about that.
But the things I KNOW I'll miss hit me at the strangest times.
For example, I'll miss walking down the quad and crunching the beautiful fall leaves beneath my feet, or watching the pure innocence of a person's first snow quickly followed by the adulteration of that snow, with snowball fights and snow forts. I'm going to miss how green the quad smells after a rain, hell even during a rain. I can just feel the earth moving beneath and all around me. Even the downpours I've experienced can't alter my love of this campus.
I'll miss the energy (that I claim I hate). The dumb freshman I absolutely love making fun of. I'll miss being looked up to by undergraduates and feeling needed, admired and respected. I'll miss commiserating with my fellow graduate students who share the same sinister love of our great works. The doors of ISR will never be as friendly to me as the night Kari and I went for a run and then mud sliding... only to creep into ISR leaving a guilty trail the entire way to our rooms. And although I haven't been in Hopkins hall since my long ago undergraduate days, I'll miss waking up on the weekends with a gaggle of wonderful man-children finding their place in the world and enjoying the peace of a wonderful Sunday brunch. NHB will always feel like the old, decrepit home I know I belong to, whether or not the faces there remain memorable. The mid-line of the stadium will forever remind me that I should never run a half-marathon EVER again. Fox Meadow will always be full of geese and sleet and slush... and friendship. The pool will just be a MES (Mary, Ed, Sam) of memories. And Crane Alley, a continuoum of my life that makes bad memories pass and always creates new memories. And to Siam Terrace, for becoming friends with Amanda and learning how awkward Bruce really is. To Beckman Institute where I fell in love for all the wrong reasons. And 258 NHB where I fell in love for all the right reasons and never acted on them. For my shower on the 5th floor of ISR where I learned the extent of man's boldness and late-night where I was shown the extent of man's friendship... I'll never forget this place.
