This week has been a struggle. I’m sorry, I know that’s a very defeatist attitude to start a blog post, but it’s what I’ve been feeling and if you follow my twitter here you’ll see that I have been slowly losing my mind. (Ayyyy, check out that trans-social media marketing there.)

It’s April, and there isn’t really a lot to be excited about since, this morning, I walked all the way down from my room in the third floor, reached the ground floor and then went up and wore my heavier winter jacket. It’s 2 degrees Celsius. I wouldn’t mind the April showers at this point! At least then it’ll be nice and muggy-warm instead of wind that makes you feel like you’re about to fly off to a faraway land that leads to the magical land of Oz. It’s very windy and I don’t like it is what I am basically trying to point out here.

But there have been other things that have been marking the end of my time here. My last East vs. West party, the last Major Recognized party in Bryn Mawr College. I remember my freshman year the theme was Superheroes vs. …. something? Supervillians? I can’t remember. All I know is that I wore a Superman shirt, and I danced with friends on a ledge behind the DJ table on East. Good times, good memories, good shirt that I borrowed from Alizeh.

It is April, and it’s the last month before my theses are due, before this mountain of stress and anxiety is slightly deflated, and I feel a curious mix of nostalgia and sadness and weird superiority. I want to sit in the library, where I now live, gather all the children around me, and start every conversation by staring off into the distance and then saying: “You should cherish your time here, because [insert poignant advice].” I have no real poignant advice to give, that’s why that’s added there as a placeholder.

I don’t feel wiser. Not really. I feel more tired. But I can’t deny that I have grown and changed and progressed so much through my time here at Bryn Mawr. I’ve met so many people who have influenced me and changed me for the better. For good or worse and everything in between, it has all been a good experience. Before this week, I haven’t really felt like a senior. I mean, I definitely knew it was my last year, and that I was writing and thesis, and that I Was Leaving, but I thought that there had to be more feelings coming with it.

Lo and behold, during the Anthropology Spring Tea, I stood up in front of a group of my fellow seniors, with professors and students of all different class years in front of me, and explained what my thesis was about, as I have seen three generations of seniors do before me in various disciplines. That was a Feeling. It forced me to but my research into words, made me consider why I was an Anthropology major, what I wanted to do with it after I graduated and really, one of the more important questions: why was this research important to me in the first place?

And I got to eat lots of cheese and cupcakes, just as an added bonus.

Later that day, I attended the Senior Dinner with Bryn Mawr’s President Kim Cassidy at her house. Again, that’s something that I have seen my senior friends preparing to attend for several years, and it felt really great to attend and feel how cyclical this all was, that I am doing it this year, and the junior class will be doing it the year after me, and Bryn Mawr will continue with the senior class standing in their rooms deciding what to wear 30 minutes before they attend. Or maybe that’s just me. I attended with my friends, and we got to eat great food, and mingle with KCass and feel like Adults having a Night Out. And then we walked back to campus, a perhaps 10 minute walk to my dorm, and dress in sweatpants and head to the library and I felt a little changed, I won’t lie. I had attended Anthropology Senior Conference earlier that day, was going to meet with my English thesis advisor the next day, and had a plan and an organized way to look at my thesis. It was a good adult day, where I could tell I was almost crossing over to the real world, and I saw that I fit in, and I wasn’t as scared.

I guess this blog post comes as one of the first in a series of goodbyes I’m going to have to make throughout the end of this year, to friends, professors, people who have helped me, maybe more than they know.

Aw shucks, now I’m getting sappy on the Internet.