fin?

Nobody really tells you about what the weeks leading up to graduation will really feel like. There are the obvious things: #notmanymorenights and the mindset that suddenly turns everyone spontaneous and willing to eat and hang out and do dumb things. The way that it becomes impossible to try to cut or diet for grad photos because damn food late at night really does hit differently and really helps in making memories, even if it will torpedo your waistline and any progress you’ve made at the gym. The little nagging idea that with some people, the meals that you grab with them just might be the last time you get to sit down and talk with them in your lifetime. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Senior year has been treating me quite well honestly. Going to Korea fall quarter was a nice disconnect and after coming back for winter, I was honestly pretty worried about trying to make connections and friends and was pretty ready to just invest in the people that I was close with before, graduate, and dip. But I am thankful for the new friendships that have been cultivated through whatever avenue, whether it was KCM, KCN, or whatever else. All things considered, I feel very lucky.

There are a few cursed questions that seniors get asked too. “Do you know what you’ll be doing post-grad?” “What’s something you want to do before graduating?” And the one I’ve really been reflecting on: “Who do you think you’ll keep in contact with after graduating?”

What a morbid question. But I would be lying if I said that I haven’t been racking my brain considering who I do and don’t want to keep in touch with after I leave college. If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of them.

It’s funny, a few days ago I sent a message to some people asking if I was selfish for being pretty content with disconnecting with the majority of the people that I’ve met and kind of disappearing with me going to Duke. Part of me wants to say that it’s the rational decision, especially since it is incredibly difficult to keep in contact with people from the other side of the country as a busy student that is really bad at investing in relationships that are not directly in front of him in the first place. And I thought that I was relatively at peace with that decision, content to pour out what I could and then leave after that, ready to tackle a new chapter of my life and eventually come back after 3 years.

Turns out, I wasn’t as at peace with that decision as I thought. Or to put it better, I am at peace with it, but when confronted face to face with the thought that I will be leaving most of what I’ve known for the past four years, I am sad. Everything is changing too fast, too much, all at once. And that is what I think no one really ever tells you about.

College is weird. I came into college a little shek of a freshman that thought he knew what he was doing and am leaving as hopefully less of a shek that has no idea what he is doing. Perhaps that’s what maturing is, being able to realize that you know nothing and will have to grow, only to find that every time you think you’ve grown, you find out there is that much more to learn. Freshman year was a blur, sophomore and junior year barely count because of COVID, and now I’m five weeks away from graduating. Five weeks, 35 days, a little more than a month. And then what?

The easy answer to that question is the obvious one: law school. But I think the thing I’ve been struggling to really, truly answer is what happens now to the relationships that I’ve cultivated, the people that I’ve met, all these different issues. What happens there?

Like I’ve said, there are very clearly people that I want to continue to invest in. But wanting to do that and actually doing that are two different things. Being three time zones away also probably won’t do much to help with that either and life gets in the way, so on and so forth. And I’ve realized there are people that will continue to stay in my life because they’ve already done so, but there are also people that I feel this sense of 아쉬움 with because I want to continue to invest in them and get closer to them, but I’ve only known them for a limited amount of time that there’s still the possibility that it bottoms out.

I don’t know why it bothers me so much. Perhaps it’s just my anxiety and selfishness in wanting to have friends and people to lean on. The idealist in me wants to say that it’s also because I genuinely enjoy spending time with these people and want that to continue but who knows.

I was going through some old messages and some advice that I was giving someone a few years back. I told them that while it’s hard, it’s best to love a lot on people because it is better to love and hurt if things don’t work out than to regret not loving enough. And I still think that’s true, and not even just for romantic relationships, but faced with the prospect of having that ~hurt~ happen, I obviously don’t like it. Sometimes I wish I could go back to being apathetic, but I know that’s not the right answer either.

Whenever I reflect on this, I always go back to the same ol’ Bojack Horseman quote: “Sometimes life’s a bitch and you keep living.” And whenever I read that quote, it always sounds so incredibly edgy and depressing. It gets the struggle in life right, but it doesn’t touch on the joys enough. There is much to be joyful and thankful for; it’s just that right now, it is a bit sad.

There’s no real answer to this, I’ve realized, which I also dislike. It would be so much easier for it to be something that I’m doing “right” or “wrong” but instead, I’m just being. All it is is a certain degree of hurt or sadness at a certain time. By the time I publish this and go to bed, I’ll probably read this back tomorrow morning and wonder why I was so emotional and move on. Sometimes it’ll hurt a lot, sometimes it’ll hurt a little, and sometimes it won’t hurt at all, but through it all there will always be toil and struggle to get through each day. And life will go on because nothing lasts forever for both pain and for joy.

So I guess when I say no one really tells you what the weeks leading up to graduation feel like, I think I mean that nothing ever prepares you for the tension that you experience between cherishing what could be your last moments with people and preparing yourself for “adulthood.” You want to make memories and enjoy yourself, yet doing that will just make goodbyes harder. Not that I will be a full fledged adult once June comes around, far from it, but this seems to be a relatively final closing of one chapter in preparation for another. I would like to think this grief and sadness is mourning a life I once knew and was familiar with while also preparing for whatever else is coming. But again, that sounds so goddamn angsty.

There’s no point in worrying over what the future will look like because there are no guarantees for anything ever. That’s never stopped me though. Like I said, there’s no right answer to this.

Who knows, maybe six months from now, I’ll look back, read this and laugh at how worried I was as an anxious little college senior ill-prepared for grad school. If you are reading this though, thanks for the impact that you’ve made in my life thus far. I hope you stick around for the rest of it too.