Feeling Removed

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how removed I’ve been feeling from the university as a whole. This is my third year here, and I’m beginning to get the feeling it’s about to start being time for me to begin to remove myself from the university so that I’m not feeling too attached when I leave. I’ve had a lot of good moments here and I’m sure there are still a lot left for me to experience, but I also have to be realistic and remind myself that this isn’t going to last forever. The college experience is one that people say is the best time of your life blah blah and that you will never want to leave. I’ve definitely had those emotions fill me up during my time here, but I was afraid that I really would never want to leave and move on. Now, I can rest assure that I will be able to graduate next year without having any regrets, or doubts.

I remember coming here in the Fall of 2007 and never wanting to leave during my freshmen or sophomore years. After having a good, fun, wrap-up of the summer in my hometown of Chapel Hill, NC, I couldn’t think of anyone who was more excited to finally leave their parent’s house than I was. There was not a doubt in my mind that I was ready to move on to living on my own, with thousands of my peers within feet of me constantly. I’ve always had a distant type of relationship with my family. Me being a first generation American, a lot of things that appear as normal to me, will never appear normal to my parents. Of course I love them to death, but I honestly felt like my time with them was nearing an end. This same feeling is beginning to return to me now as a junior at UNCW. I’m not saying UNCW is like my parents, but this university has already taught me so much about life and I will be taking lessons from this place far into my future.

Graduation is coming up for a lot of my close friends, and it’s going to be interesting to see what life is going to be like next year. I’ve created a lot of genuine friendships with a lot of upperclassmen that are graduating next year, and I’ve never actually thought about what life would be like without them. Of course, as the months draw closer to May, the thought returns to my mind almost daily. I’ve grown to love a lot of these people, and I really hope that these relationships aren’t forgotten. We joke about weddings and what life will be like in the future, and it will be quite the story to see how we all turn out. Every once in a while, I have to stop and remind myself where we are, and what we’re doing, because there’s no way that something like this can last forever. I realize that, but sometimes it’s nice to remind myself just how good of a feeling this moment with them feels and how badly I want to catch that feeling and open it up with them years from now.

It’s funny, there are moments that we have in life that we never ever want to end, yet we somehow have ended up saying that phrase multiple times by now. I feel like the best times of our lives are ahead of us. Yes, college is a wonderful, traumatizing, exciting, nerve racking, tumultuous, painful, joyous, heart wrenching experience that teaches us so much about life. We’re exposed to all types of demographics and backgrounds that it’s almost impossible to not learn something new every day. I’m feeling removed from the university, but there’s no way that I’m going to forget who’ve I’ve met, the experiences I’ve had, the vast amounts of intangible skills that I’ve acquired and the moments that I’ve shared with the people around me.