I had made a bucket list for my last week of undergraduate classes at UT.
It wasn’t long, mostly involving the typical cliché things everyone tries to fit in – roasting marshmallows on the Torchbearer, eating in Morrill Cafeteria one last time and even spending one more all-nighter in Hodges.
Then I realized scrambling to fit all of these things in before I graduate does not really matter. Yeah, I would like a final refresher, a last toast to my time here. But what really matters is the time I spent along the way.
Think back on it – maybe it was the first time you found yourself yelling completely in unison with all of the other students as a football player sprinted to the end zone; the time you were struggling to carry a table down Pedestrian Walkway and a fellow student came up behind you, picked it up and walked with you; or the night you spent with your friends in the library laughing about god-knows-what and not studying at all for your 8 a.m. test, but secretly loving it anyway.
They are not always the extraordinarily spectacular times, but the everyday moments. The moments when you feel everything is in place, all is right in the world, you are exactly where you need to be and are perfectly happy.
These last days of my last week of class have passed surreptitiously. And by the time this column is printed, there will only be two left. I’m not sure what I was expecting: perhaps a celebratory cry at the end, a throwing up of papers like they do in the movies, a jubilant running through the hallways screaming that we are, indeed, done – forever. But the whole process has been a little bit anticlimactic.
Life is not the movies (no matter how much we’ve wished it was). Professors have said goodbye, we’ve zipped up our bags, walked out and just like that, it is over.
It all feels surreal. But for the rest of you, it is just another week. You feel sad for your senior friends who are graduating and leaving, but it has not hit you because you’ll be back in the fall, pounding the pavement yet again.
But the thing is, you don’t have as much time as you think, and I don’t want you to try and soak it all in your last week when you realize it’s suddenly all over. I want you to do it along the way.
Imprint those moments – the ones where you feel that indescribable joy – keep them in your mind, pull them out and laugh to yourself every once in awhile. Because that’s what college, and life, is all about.
So now, I guess it’s time to say goodbye. UT, I may leave you, but you’ll always be in my heart. Really, more like my soul. Once a lost freshman looking to find her way, now a found senior clinging to her roots.
No matter where life takes me, or really us, seniors: let us always remember our time here, the good and bad, the tears and laughter, the failures and success, and hold it close to us. We’ve pledged our love and loyalty every day of our four years, we’ve had our time on this hallowed hill and between these stately walls, and now we must pass on the beacon shining bright.
So from the bottom of our big orange hearts, let us say goodbye, to our alma mater true, goodbye.
And now a brief shout-out to all the people who have pushed, pulled and walked beside me on this journey that is college: thank you to you all.
To my wonderful assortment of roommates, to the lifelong friends I’ve made, to my first college boyfriend, to the student organizations I’ve loved being a part of, to the wonderful professors who have stretched my mind, to my lab who has been there for me through almost every day of my undergrad, to my parents who let me try out being who I want to be in the world while giving me a place to come back to.
Without all of you, I would not be here, saying goodbye to the University of Tennessee.
Go Vols.
Victoria Knight is a senior in microbiology. She can be reached at [email protected].
