I've been having lots of interview-related things going on this week (Princeton yesterday, STB scholarship this Friday, arrangements for the EDB one week after next) and those occurrences, coupled with the anticipation that IB ends tomorrow, has led me to the realization that as tomorrow comes around, the end of my JC days, my AC days, will have arrived. No more reason for going back to school - no EE, no consultations, no training, no meetings.
There's a very funny ache inside associated with this realization, because I'm going to miss AC so much. I'm going to miss the people. The madness. Being young and stupid and crazy in school watching all the nonsense unfold around me and knowing that we're in this safe little bubble where there's significant room for error and nothing requires that much (over)thinking. I guess I'm a little afraid - no, very afraid - of going out into the real world and facing the prospect of not having any more room for error. Less cushioning. More at stake.
So, rather fittingly, I watched Jimmy Eat World's "Work" video today and it made me so melancholy and pensive it's almost amusing, given how I always laugh about my guilty pleasure in listening to JEW because they seem so teenage-angsty. But I realize that there is where I am in life. In that teenage-angst phase when you take everything so seriously that every small thing is a big thing and every big thing - well, you're so cynical that it becomes a small thing. It's funny and sad and nostalgic at the same time, thinking of this and the past 6 years of my life, "growing up" - I think I grew up and consequently there's things I left behind and that's probably for the better but I'll miss some of it.
It's rather odd because I always see RG as having contributed more to my development than any other experience in my life and yet AC has been such an experience in itself, I think I must eat my words. Just talking to my Princeton interviewer yesterday about myself - track, switching from A's to IB, EE, IMUN - these are all things from the past 2 years and indeed AC has become a part of me, or rather I a part of AC, and I wouldn't trade that for the world. I think I grew up in AC but I also grew-down, found so much happiness in small things and I think I matured by recognizing that I'm only 18 and embracing the "perpetual state of intoxication" of youth.
It was in AC that I learnt to take so many risks - so many leaps of faith - with people, with commitments, with God. I feel like I really am comfortable with myself now, glad and grateful for who I am, flaws and all.
And so I recall one thing Mr Hodge said during his closing address a couple of weeks back, which struck me at the time and resounds now - even though we may have graduated, ACS will always be our home. Just as RG has always been my home.
And it is really odd that I ended with that thought, because one song that I heard (of all places, on a Nikon ad on tv the other day) and that has been haunting me today is - Welcome Home, by Radical Face. I'm thinking that it will be associated with this day, this ending.
But then it is not an ending at all, because the future days will be a continuity.
And I think - I'm quite ready for another adventure.
0 comments:
Post a Comment