SHEA: With a sigh

The impeding date of graduation makes me feel as if I’m being led on stage for an unprepared yet complicated performance. I’m just not ready.

It’s not that I have a bleak or unknown future ahead of me: I have been accepted to multiple graduate programs and have the privilege of continuing to do what I love. But it’s Boston I’ll miss, our campus in particular.

Once my Terrier Card is deactivated, I lose library access, and I move out of my apartment — well, I can meander around Commonwealth Avenue all I want, but in reality I’ll never be “in” again. At least not in the same way I am now.

There’s something so special about living in an enclosed world where everyone is supportive and the future seems like centuries away. But now each time I look at a calendar, I’m in denial that I’ll soon be violently ripped from this perfect life and sent somewhere else. I see a lot of gin in my future.

I’ve felt like a ghost for a while now, or at least like a distant observer imagining what life will be like when I’m no longer a part of what has been the best four years ever. I miss even the most minor of things already, even the annoying ones. The worst day at Boston University is the best day anywhere else.

For example, I was bored in class this afternoon and literally started tearing up because it was the last Tuesday seminar I’d be bored in. Tell me that’s not screwed up.

Every time I look at my breathtaking view of the Charles River skyline from my very own living room, I want to crawl into the fetal position and rock back and forth, tightly grasping a bottle of whatever I can find. Don’t make me graduate. Just don’t do it.

But just like my high school cheerleading uniform, some things are meant to be outgrown after a sufficient amount of time. In some ways the awkwardness of staying another year would be worse than the grief of leaving at the appropriate date.

No matter how much I try to be mindful and live in the moment, there’s no stopping the progression of time. It’s obviously better to spend my last days of class being productive and having fun, but I want to make everything happen as slowly as possible.

I can’t say that I’ve exactly made a mark on campus. These columns get binned (hopefully recycled) after a day or so. And I guess I edited a few newspapers, maybe even dropped gum somewhere on the sidewalk. In the library where someone had ripped out Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” I wrote it down by memory on a piece of paper freshman year and put it in, kind of like a time capsule or a pressed flower.

I guess for someone that’s made all the difference.

Sydney L. Shea is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at slshea@bu.edu.