5 Days: The 5 Stages of Mourning and Dickens

I thought I might count down the last few days of my undergraduate life, record my thoughts... perhaps engage in a little ranting. (Just a little, I promise.)

A keychain tassel hanging from my rear view mirror... just to remind me.

5 more days until my undergraduate career at The University of Texas at Austin is over. (If you count Friday as 0, Thursday as 1, etc., etc.)

I've been thinking a lot today about the past, specifically, about four years ago now, when I was about to get onstage for my last time in the senior play, and thinking how much I really didn't like the play that much, and how I was really excited that I was almost through working at Macy's, and how ugh if I could just get through, like, two more weeks of stupid high school classes and drama that I would be able to just push it all behind me and move forward. High school was totally dragging me down, man.

I realized then that I had accepted the end of my career as a high school student at St Michael's.

Tonight was a little alumni dinner for St Michael's students, and aside from the people who had brought their kids, I was the youngest alumnus there. I was in good company, though, because my friend and her fiance (Class of 2006 and 2005 respectively) were there, and I was happy that I wasn't the only young'un (as Class of 2008). I had a delightful time, and it was wonderful to have a free dinner and get to meet new people.

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I think I'm mourning my relationship with UT.

The five stages of mourning:

1) Denial and Isolation: Me, circa February: "May is, like, really far away. I don't even know what day I'm graduating, anyway. It's sometime in May, though, right?"

2) Anger: Me, circa late March: "I am just so DONE with this. Why the hell do I even have to do any of this? God, I am so close that I can taste it but I have to do so much work between now and then I can't even stand it!

3) Bargaining: Me, circa four weeks ago: "But I can always go to grad school, right? This doesn't have to end, right??

4) Depression: Me, circa the last two weeks: "I am never getting a job. I don't want to grow up. Who the hell even thought that college was a good idea? Who is the idiot who let me do this?!"

5) Acceptance: Me, circa ??? "...It might actually be fun out there in the real world."

Am I actually at the acceptance part? Am I stuck in limbo between Bargaining and Depression? Have I even left Bargaining yet? Is it possible to slide between the two, because I've been volleying back and forth between the last three for a few weeks.

I might be at the Acceptance part, mostly because I want to get on with reading books that I want to read, not that school tells me to read.

In any case, I would like to take this opportunity to invoke Dickens, because although I'm pretty sure he's applicable in every situation, he is especially applicable in this one:

"And now those six days which were to have run out so slowly, had run out fast and were gone, and to-morrow looked me in the face more steadily than I could look at it." (Great Expectations, Ch 19)

I can't stop thinking about that quote.