I'm not ready for it

but fourth-year has come for me anyway.

It is a pain in my stomach each time I think that I already signed up for my last semester of classes at UVA (which, to look at it, is obviously the schedule of a fourth-year english major who is graduating in December....my classes are about Jane Austen, discovering poetic voice, and hand drumming). It is enough to take my breath away, the thought that my life a year from this day is utterly foreign to me. What will I be doing? Where will I be? Both of those questions are complete unknowns.

I'm the overly-sentimental type. I grieve at the end of television episodes. You can only imagine how I'll be grieving to end this college section of my life. I feel underprepared for it. As soon as I got the hang of this thing, it's being taken from me.

But you know that saying that college is the best four years of your life? I don't think that's true. Sure, it's a unique and incredible time. You live with your best friends. You can do incredibly dumb things and get away with them. You don't have many of the concerns "real" adults have. But I like to be optimistic and think that there could be even bigger and better times out there for me. Even though I can't really imagine them at the moment.

So for now I will hold on to the joy of living with nine girls. and of drinking coffee at midnight to stay up writing a paper. and of all the other small things that come with being a college girl. and then, once college ends and the world opens up to me, I get to go and be anything that I could ever dream of being. Or that God could dream of me being. and that's an even bigger and more colorful thing to imagine.

back when I was a little first-year and enjoyed going to football games. and picking my nose.