Blogger Challenge Day 30

Blogger Challenge 30: “Goodbye Graceland”
It’s 2am in the morning right now, a Tuesday in early May. I’ve been sitting here in my computer chair for about 10 minutes thinking back. I can’t help but be sappy as I’m staring at the disarray of my Graceland life attempting to be sorted through and organized back into my bedroom at my parents’. It’s weird shuffling through the mess thinking, “this will never see a dorm room again,” but, I never will either. There’s a lot of these never-again’s that keep rolling through my head. I’ll never hear my friend call me her math-buddy again. I’ll never have my tutee cry and hug me, saying I’m the reason she passed her math class, again. I’ll never sleep in an overstuffed van during ACM trips again. I’ll never see snow for the first time with my foreign exchange friends again. I’ll never have a friend comfort me by taking orders while wearing pink star-shaped children’s sunglasses again. I’ll never repeat, “If somebody walked in right now,” with my old roommate again. I’ll never laugh on the inside with my friends as a student types in profanity over and over on accident again. I’ll never run in the warm rain barefoot again. I’ll never… but I want to. I want these back and more! BUT the past is the past and who am I to think that I can pull the past to the present and recreate those exact memories!?

Well, exact no, but maybe in some kind of slanted askew recreation I can. I’ve always said that the best thing about Graceland is the amount of opportunities they provide for you to take advantage of, and the people who will help you through those journeys. Graceland not only set me up to create all of these memories, but they showed me how to make them possible on my own. I know that, although I no longer call GU my home, I can start up an after-school coding program again, I can teach at a STEM Camp again, I can tutor math again, I can enter programming competitions again, I can do scholarly research again, and most importantly, I can recreate lasting relationships again.

Before I decided to type up all these thoughts and feelings, I was fumbling with this clear, orange-topped tumbler cup from Baker University. I’m scared, I’ll admit that without guilt. Deep-down I’m still scared what will come of attending a new school and how the rest of the world will work around me, but I can take a look down at this cup and know that I can recreate anything I want and that I will be set no matter where I go.

So, to all my friends and family of Graceland University, who taught me how to adult on my own,

Thank You