What You Take With You

As the semester and my whole undergraduate education come to a close, I begin to wonder what pieces of it I will take with me and what will be disregarded. Which facts were merely crammed into my brain before a test and never converted into the long term.

Will I remember that this semester I learned that boys are more fragile in the womb than girls so most miscarriages are boys? Probably so, because that is something that I might end up being able to relate to in the future. Will I remember the year that Catcher in the Rye was written or the mechanics of human biology? Probably not. But will I remember the minutia of all that I learned in my creative writing classes and workshops? Absolutely. It is those classes that I will truly miss. The laughs and completely off-the-wall discussions that can only be produced by a group of crazy writers. And I say crazy in an affectionate way. Because those classes have made these last few semesters worth getting through.  Thanks Prof. McKinney, Rice and Grandbois.

I'm sure there will be other random facts and experiences that will creep into my mind in the future that actually did stick. But it's hard not to look at the large quantities of information that are no longer there. It's a little sad – to spend so much time and money on receiving that information - and having so much of it not get into my brain.

But I guess that isn't really what college was supposed to be about. At least not for me. For me, it was growing into the person I am now and learning about who I really am and who I want to become. There is so much that I have discovered or re-discovered about who I really am during these last five years, it really is hard to even pinpoint how I got from point A to point B. I am now an avid exerciser and not because I have to be, but because I want to be. I love playing softball. I want to do more yoga. I love to write and play music, in so many different capacities. I hope to be able to cultivate all of these in the coming months and years with the absence of school. I am now a wife, and we have a beautiful future ahead of us. Chris has made me a (calmer) and better person and continues to allow me to figure out who I am everyday and to support those continued changes.

School was a part of the path I needed to take, and it may be cynical for me to say but, in the end – it's only a degree. An important piece of the puzzle, but not everything.


So finally, I leave you with two things that one of my teachers this semester left us with on one of our last days of class. It may sound kitchy or cliché to say, but there are some things that are just so true that you have to share them.

“Seek out life experiences, not possessions."

“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.” Viktor Frankl

So go out there and seek out all of the great experiences life has to offer!

And always remember that even in the worst of situations, you have the ability to choose your own attitude.  That is always a challenge for me, but one that I will always continue to welcome. 

And that, my friends, I believe is the greatest thing you can take with you out of college. Learning about life, and learning about yourself. The rest is just filler. :-)