Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time again. Here we are at the end of another semester and another year. Four more days of classes! Woohoo!! Only Beale Street Music Fest, one study day, Cinco de Mayo and a week-and-a-half of exams stand between you and me and summer. This could be good news if you know what you’re doing this summer, or it could be bad news if you haven’t arranged your summer plans yet and/or are about to graduate and have no idea what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. Good luck with that.
Can I risk a bit of nostalgia? (Odds are, most of you are half-delirious from procrastination-induced late night cramming as it is, so I’m going to take your semi-comatose blank stare as a “yes” and continue.) This term has flown by. I blinked twice and finals were here. All of a sudden the conversations I have with myself that go, “Don’t worry, Leigh, you have three months to pull up your grade in (basically all of my classes), go ahead and spend an hour watching ‘Glee,’” aren’t going to work. Oh dear. I have a feeling that, for better or worse, time is only going to move more quickly as we get older.
Not to get too serious on you in the week preceding finals, but I wonder, is that positive or negative? Why is my perception of time changing as I age? (Besides the early on-set dementia, I mean.) I guess it’s because now I have more of a measure against which to compare my current experiences, if that makes sense. Like how, because I’m accustomed to driving five or six hours to get home, driving about three hours to Nashville (to see Ben Harper!) is a breeze: The semester moves so quickly because the time is short in comparison to how long I’ve been alive. But I wonder if in gaining “quantity” in my life, so to speak, I’m losing “quality,” the capacity to wonder and to be surprised. I wanted to mention this because it’s said youth is wasted on the young, and I don’t want that to be true for any of us. Best not let life pass you by, I think. (In case you noticed, I’m trying to fit as many clichés as possible into this column. I felt like I didn’t use enough during the school year, so I’m trying to make up for lost time. Used another!)
There’s a “Gilmore Girls” episode calling my name (well, actually, my roommate is doing the calling: This isn’t Hogwarts; inanimate objects don’t speak in my apartment … usually), so I’ll make this short. Just survive this week and finals, and then you’re golden. Unless you’re graduating without a job. If that’s the case, let me say with Henry V (in the comfortable knowledge that I have four more years before I’ll have to look for a job), “Once more unto the breach, dear friends.” Good luck with, you know, life. You’ll be fine: “I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips / Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot: / Follow your spirit, and upon this charge / Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”
I always find Henry V inspiring, and I think quoting Shakespeare is quite the cliché. Though I wouldn’t recommend actually charging anywhere crying “God for Harry, England, and Saint George.” But to each his or her own.
Congratulations to those of you who are graduating. It’s an impressive accomplishment, no matter how many “victory laps” it took you. I’d also like to give a special congratulations to my (crazy) friends Alex and Anne-Elise, who are graduating, marrying each other and moving to New Orleans very, very soon. Bonne chance mes amis. To everyone else, good luck with finals and have a wonderful summer. God bless. And I’ll catch ya on the flip side.
— Leigh Dickey is a junior in global studies. She can be reached at [email protected].
