Goodbyes, Part Two

It seems like graduation should feel different, exceptional. I mostly felt normal.

It was just like everything else our school ever did. It was slightly chaotic and unorganized, but ended in something beautiful, even if it was only beautiful to us. School board officials gave slightly forced speeches, the superintendent gave a genuine one, and students demonstrated why we deserved rented ferns at our graduation. It did represent our school as best as a few short hours could.

But I felt pretty normal. I didn't feel like I was moving from a high school (and college) student to a high school (and college) graduate. I just felt like I was sitting in a gym floor wearing a silly outfit with some friends. Even walking across the stage still seemed like a rehearsal; I couldn't possibly be doing it for real. Maybe we spent too much nostalgia throughout the years to really summon up the emotion on this typically monumental day.

There were really only small, isolated moments where I felt something greater than what I feel every day.

The first came when we walked in and I first saw how many people were occupying the gym's bleachers, packed in like sardines, snapping pictures like paparazzi (fanatical, proud parents are probably the only photographers in the world scarier than paparazzi). I thought how wonderful it was to see all of the people I'd never have to explain what my school was or how I came to this place in my education to in one room. They all just understood; they knew the magnitude of our accomplishments without belabored explanation and questions. They just clapped. I felt happy, but I didn't feel graduated.

The second came while I was reading my short, inconsequential speech. Most of the time, I was just terrified. I didn't look up into the crowd because I had to read and concentrate on keeping my voice from breaking. But then I got to a feeble joke all my classmates would understand and I heard a few tiny laughs from them. Before, it felt like I was just speaking to the wall out of obligation, but then I realized people were actually listening. That sort of sums up all of my high school graduation--sometimes it didn't seem like it, but people were listening. I felt proud, but I didn't feel graduated.

Next, skip to the end of the ceremony. The principal "by the power bestowed upon her by Surry County Schools" or something like that pronounced us graduated, and we turned our tassels. Excitement bubbled up inside me, the kind of excitement that is rare and raw and can't be replicated. I looked around at the cardboard topped faces smiling in rows and knew they felt much the same.

In that one singular moment did I feel truly graduated.

I could post forever about all the little moments and exceptional people that made my school so wonderful, but it just seems unnecessary. I may be graduated, but a little part of me will always be sitting in the T-building waiting for school to start.

Goodbyes, Part 1

I was just catching up on all "The Office" episodes I've missed in the last year so, but I had to stop after the "Goodbye, Michael" episode. After seven real years and twenty television ones, Michael Scott worked his last day at Dunder Mifflen, and it was the second saddest thing I've ever seen on television (number one being the Gilmore Girls series finale, which still tears me up even though I've seen it several times). Though the show is mostly silly and the characters over the top, the goodbyes were just so heartfelt and sad.

The whole time, I kept thinking of my community college. Maybe it was because I haven't really got the closure on high school yet, but I'm pretty much done with the college. Maybe it was because the college seems a little bit like Dundler Mifflen. Maybe it's just because every goodbye is hitting harder these days.

Whatever the reason, I feel like I should pay a little tribute to good ole SCC. I spent much of my time there ragging on the place, ashamed of walking among some of the least intelligent people I've ever met. But SCC is great because I also met some of the most intelligent people I've ever met there. It's a place of extremes: really young and really old, really lazy and really ambitious, really homegrown and really exotic.

A few of the professors, one in particular, set me on course. Essentially, isn't that what community college is for? I went from studying something everybody else assumed I loved to something I know I love. The professor saw in me what I refused to admit was there; he kept me from settling. As cheesy as it sounds, he gave me the confidence I needed to pursue the path I know, however difficult, I should be going down. Though I never expected to find it on community college campus, I found challenge and direction. I wonder if he knows how much his words hit home. If I had never gone to that school, I might still be plodding down the wrong path.

I also got my first job, the best job I could ever have, at SCC. It furthered reinforced what I had just realized--I need to be a teacher. It showed me I could do it and that I would love it. It allowed me to meet people both inspirational and infuriating. It let me feel some of what it is like to part of an office a la The Office. That experience, something I could never have anywhere else, is now an essential part of me, thanks to SCC.

I'm going to miss eating artery-clogging meals in the grill with whatever random people found in there. I'm going to miss everyone freaking out when the water in the fountain outside the grill freezes over. I'm going to miss being the only person in the library looking for a book instead of watching "That 70's Show" on Youtube. I'm going to miss teachers start considering you less students and more humans, friends. I'm going to miss being in classes of all ages and all walks of life and meeting people who are getting construction degrees so they can build their own houses. I'm even going to miss the taxidermy conferences and spending forever looking for a parking space.

I'm probably still going to try to deny the community college credits on my transcript, even though I earned them while still in high school. But even though I never would've attended SCC if it weren't for my weird little high school, I wouldn't trade my time there for the world. It made me who I am, and while I might not be the ultimate version of myself, I can't image I'd be a superior me without SCC.

During their emotional goodbye, Jim tells Michael that "goodbyes are a bitch." He was definitely right. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm going to miss you, SCC.

Who Knows

The blinking cursor mocks me mercilessly as I stare at the empty page. With every digitized blink, I wonder more and more if I have the power to move it across the white expanse, send it on a harrowing journey to the bottom of the page, make it disappear on a freshly printed document.

I do the busy work, providing a false sense of accomplishment. My name, the date, the header. They don’t really matter but make my idle hands feel useful for a moment, the worry welding up within me temporarily quelled.

My mind races about everything but the topic at hand. I run my hand over the spines of the books lining the shelf behind me. Dust stirs up in plumes at my touch. All of these words. They’ve all passed through my brain, have all influenced me somehow. I envy the names printed on the dust jackets. How I long to do what they’ve accomplished: they’ve written something somebody else wanted to read. Their cursors moved, their abilities proven; they found the secret ingredient so elusive to me. I hope I could absorb their abilities by proxy, but all I manage to do is sneeze.

In the movies, characters just go on some adventure where they find the inspiration they need to write the story that’s been lying dormant inside them all along. I go outside and walk down the street, hoping something miraculous will happen.

It’s a nice day, kind of sunny with a slight breeze. Pretty non-descript. The road is same as it always is with its faded white line marking the division between coming and going, the mailboxes patiently waiting to gobble up deliveries, the trees quietly standing guard over the silent houses. The familiarity erases any chance of inspiration. A cat eyes me suspiciously where the road dead ends. As I approach his territory, he backs up but never diverts his piercing green pupils. I stop to keep him from running, and we reach an impasse.

The only sounds are the birds chirping and us breathing, sounds so familiar they hardly count as sounds at all. The cat is looking at me like I’m the most interesting and frightening thing in the world. In that moment, his whole existence hinges on whether I am friend or foe. As my feline acquaintance contemplates flight or fright, I take a few steps forward. He arches his back in retaliation. “It’s okay, kitty,” I say in the baby voice people reserve for animals and infants.

Immediately, I regret it. Who am I to assume the cat should be regarded as a child? He and I treated the encounter with strikingly similar approaches. I would be offended if he meowed at me condescendingly. “Hello cat,” I replied, in a regular tone.

The cat remained frozen at the edge of his driveway, blocked by an invisible boundary, but unarched his back. I stood in the uncomfortable silence for a few more minutes before turning around to head back towards home. When I glanced back, the cat was gone. He certainly knew to cease his opportunity for escape.

Sitting back in front of my blindingly white computer screen, I rested my hands on the keys and waited. The stubborn story rests within me, arching its back, blocked by fear and boundary lines. With every step forward, it backs up. My approach is wrong. If I turn my back, it will disappear. But I coax it and coax it, and eventually, it has to come.