the final stretch

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the final stretch Sunday November 28

this is the final stretch of my undergraduate education.

you may not be able to see the tears streaming down my face, or hear the wailing sobs i am offering. they exist only symbolically. the last tears i actually shed were at my grandmother's rememberance over thanksgiving break. even those had nothing to do with the loss of life, rather, the sadness of seeing the pain a separated family has endured. no one likes watching their mother cry.

no, my life has been much easier than my mother's. i appreciate everything she has done to keep "dysfunction", as she calls it, out of my life -- while never sheltering me from the reality of the world.

and the current reality is that the eager eighteen-year-old that packed up all of his belongings a fair three weeks before moving to allen hall in the summer of 2000 is a memory of the near past, and the life that he led has brought me to here. where i go from here will not be a disjunction in the course of my life; wherever i go my life continues on a path uninterrupted. yet place, time, and familiar faces will change, daily routines, concerns, and even possibly attitudes on life, politics, or social affairs -- those too will change.

much like that eager teenager who left home over four years ago, i am excited to move on. before, however, i had the comforts of my older brother, the comforts of a school system that guaranteed my life course for at least four years -- now i only have my own drive to lead me.

this offers a freedom that is hard to resist, it comes only at a literal cost: housing and feeding myself and my lifestyle. i believe that i have equipped myself well enough to be able to get by for now, although the long journey is far from over. i will never know as much as i want to know, i can at least die trying.

it's like my mother said, "do you want to be the only brother without a master's degree?"

what if i took it up a notch and pursued a doctorate? oh, man, that'd send nate running. all i can do for now, in this final stretch, is relax, enjoy champaign, and oh yeah, graduate.