At 8:30 PM tomorrow evening, I will be officially finished with the first semester of my sophomore year of college. It feels a little bit surreal. I can’t believe how far I’ve come from where I was just one year ago. I feel like I write things like that a lot on here; I’ve come so far since a few months ago when I hated my music class, or I’ve come so far since I began this semester, or since I first stepped foot on campus. So maybe it seems a little bit like beating a dead horse with another dead horse. But I really have come a long way. A year ago, as I sat at my desk in Bullock hall, sipping coffee and passing time until I had to go into my last final, I felt like I was just starting to get my bearings at Clark. I was feeling settled in, meeting people, and getting involved. Exploring my options. Feeling it out. I was anxious to get home and to be in safe, comfortable surroundings for a while, but not long enough to lose grips on my newfound independence.
But now, a year later, I have a lot of mixed feelings about going home. I’m finally starting to feel like I have a real life here at Clark. I’ve always struggled with the divide between home and home. My suite in Maywood is home, my room is home, and my four roomates are home. But at the same time, home is home. Anchorage is home, my mom is home, watching Jeopardy and eating macaroni and cheese on the couch is home, all my friends from high school are home. I used to feel like I was living a double life, but as I’ve gotten older and more independent, I’ve started to feel like I’m building my own life for myself in Massachusetts. Not in a “I’m abandoning my parents and loved ones and the entire state of Alaska” kind of way, but in a “I’m a quasi-functional teenager/adult that has been thrust into the real world and is finally starting to figure it out” kind of way.
So as eager as I am to finish my finals, I also kind of don’t want them to be over. As soon as the papers are in, and I turn in my last exam, I’m off to the airport for the twelve-hour journey home. I’m not viewing this as an angst-y, don’t-make-me-go-home tear-fest, but rather as a sign that I’m starting to feel truly adjusted. And hey, that’s pretty cool. One-year-ago me, with her feet kicked up on the desk next to a potted plant that would soon die, would be pretty proud.
On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to share one of my final projects with you. This semester, I took an English course that focused on serial killers in film
From my final project!
and fiction. For the final, we could either write a 10-12 page paper (barf) or make some sort of creative project. Some people wrote short stories, some made soundtracks for books, and I decided to create a photo series of murder scenes from a few of the books we read. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m pretty excited about how the photos turned out. One of my favorites was from the book Zombie, which was about a man who gave lobotomies and accidentally killed his victims.
Have a lovely winter vacation, everyone, and thanks for sticking with me through my journey.