So, it’s no secret to anyone on MSA campus that I’ve done some things this year. Be it my friends, who will readily attest to the unimaginable amount of growth I’ve undergone in this span of roughly ten measly months, or my not so friendly classmates who will remind you of every misdeed I’ve ever committed against them, one thing is for certain: I’ve made my mark on this campus and the people on it.
And I think that, for better or worse, is a very amazing thing. To think that I’ve made any impression at all on these people I share each day with and the environment we cultivate is a mind boggling things. But isn’t it what we all do every day?
There are so many people on this campus who have made a mark on me. I’ll never walk into room 308 without expecting to hear an exclamation that surely came from a gremlin and being assaulted with the smell of approximately seven different Bath and Bodyworks fragrances, courtesy of my roommate Nyk. I’ll never enter my dorm bathroom without expecting the door to suddenly burst open and me be met with some obscure, chaotic quote from anything from a movie the world had forgotten to a Tiktok audio the world wished it could forget, courtesy of E. I’ll never not walk down the second floor hall of J.I. without hearing the pacing footsteps and clanging lanyard of a literary listening to what is, undoubtedly, music no one has ever heard of, courtesy of Lauren (said with love). I’ll never sit at the workshop table in the literary lab without the anticipation of a slammed down laptop and an “Okay, so…”, courtesy of Kit. I’ll never walk (or in my case, duck) under any tree on campus without a thought of how hard it would be to climb it in sandals, courtesy of Madison. I’ll never walk into the Phoenix without expecting to take the seat all the way against the right wall and talk about an anime that’s been on my watch list longer than water has been on the Earth, courtesy of Ciel. And I’ll never enter the SLC stairwell without habitually yelling “LIZ!” in a greeting, courtesy of, well, Liz.
I say goodbye to all of these people come a few days from now, and quite frankly, I am nowhere near ready. But, I wasn’t ready to meet them, either, and look how that turned out. So, with tears in my eyes and contempt for blank dorm room walls in my heart, I will face as bravely as possible the departure of my seniors, and do my best to give them one last, albeit tearstained, smile before they go.
And, after they’re gone, I’ll spend the few days we juniors have left here in what feels like liminal space to contemplate the marks left on this campus. Even if you’re just looking at what’s occurred since it was converted to MSA, there are an unimaginable number of memories embedded into the very bricks of this campus. And I can’t help but wonder what they all are, who left them, and how many of them are in the shape of me.
So, I hope you’ll wonder with me, because wondering is no fun alone.
