Starting Out On A Journey

I am officially done with school.

Ever.

(Or maybe not ever, but for now.)

Last night was my last night as the Apple's roommate. In fact, it was my last night as part of TBA (what I nicknamed our apartment on my blog way back in the beginning of the year. I believe it stands for "The Best Apartment" - not very original, I know). But not even, because M.R. had already left.

Last night, the Apple and I talked a bit until we were nearly asleep (that didn't take very long, seeing as we were both exhausted from packing and transporting luggage). When I shut the lamp, I thought to myself, "These last few seconds before I fall asleep are my last few seconds as a member of this apartment. When I wake up in the morning, my time at Stern will really be over." While I was still the Apple's roommate, it was like school was still in session, even though there were no more classes. I was still a part of my Stern experience. Now I'm home for Shabbos and any return to the Stern premises will be as a graduate.

Truthfully, I do have one more night in my apartment at Stern. D2 and I are packing our stuff on motzei Shabbos and leaving Sunday morning. But it will be just us. We will be the last ones to say goodbye to The Apartment.

...And then we, and everyone else, will go on together to the next stage of our lives.

What's both nice and strange at the same time is that we're not saying goodbye to each other. We're going to be seeing each other next year. This is not like the end of the year in Israel when people go off to their respective colleges in various different states or countries or even continents. Those people you really need to say goodbye to. But not my friends now. We're still going to be together in some ways, but...differently. I don't know what it will be like but it doesn't feel lonely.

D2, Chana, SJ, M.R., and the Apple,

This year, there were struggles, triumphs, difficult moments, awesome moments...but you guys have been amazing apartment mates.

At the start of this year, I wrote a post on beginnings. Well, now we're all facing a new kind of beginning. It's the beginning of a path in a completely different walk of life. But I think we're not alone on that path. It's one we don't know well at all, yet we are not walking it in solitude, even as we are also all doing different things next year.

There's a song from the end of the movie Anastasia that I love. It's meant to be a love song really, but I think it can really apply to any sort of close relationship - especially a deep-rooted friendship that will help each of us face whatever journey we have up ahead.



As I step wistfully out of one stage and nervously, but not unhappily, into the next, I take with me everything my time at Stern College for Women has provided me with. In a way, I am the same person I always was, except I'm being that person in a different way. It's slightly confusing. But refreshing, in a way. It's exciting to feel like I can possibly do something important with my life outside of the comfortable school cocoon.

So thank you, Stern College.

This post feels somewhat awkward, but I guess some things are hard to say, let alone say with elegance.

This blog will no longer be the records of a girl in college. Now it will be something else. Perhaps it will be more important to me than ever to write about what happens to me. My life suddenly feels like it's one big surprise.

I suppose we shall see what happens come tomorrow.