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One of the things I’ve enjoyed when spending dinner time with the AlphaNumero-9ers was “Pows and Wows” time. For the uninformed, “Pows and Wows” time is when each person shared the worst part of their day (the Pow), and the best part of their day (the Wow).

Well, it’s not dinner time, but here are some Pows and Wows:

For today:
Pow – Leaving Ann Arbor tonight. It’s been home for four years, and I’ll miss being close to all of my friends. Not that I mind being here in the Burg, or that it doesn’t feel like home, but saying goodbye today was one of the least pleasant experiences I’ve had… and I’m planning (hoping) too see most of my friends that I left today sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Wow – Spending the entire afternoon and evening with two of my best friends, doing nothing more than hanging out and having a good time. Walking around, playing some frisbee, watching a movie, and lots of just hanging out. It was a great time (except maybe the frisbee that bounced off my face… but I wasn’t injured at all, so it was just pretty funny). Honestly, I can’t think of any way I would have rather spent my last day in Ann Arbor. Thanks guys =)

Earlier in the week:
Pow – Turning in my keys, clearing off my desk, saying goodbye to my coworkers, and leaving the DCO.

Wow – Getting to see one of my good friends that I hadn’t seen in 4 months, even if I did have to pick her up at Metro Airport at ~1AM the night before graduation =P

Generic:
Wow – Getting to know all of the wonderful people I’ve had the priviledge to know, hang out with, and be friends with over the last 4 years. You guys are amazing, and I’m glad that I had friends like you. Also, actually surviving and graduating.

Pow – Not getting to know many of you as well as I would have liked.

I could go on, but it’s probably depressing enough, and, as usual, I’m falling asleep at the keyboard. One of these posts I’ll actually go over some of my updates that I’ve been saving…

Hmm… last post, April 12. I didn’t really mean for it to be over a week since my last post, but stuff got in the way (including my own laziness).

I’m finally done with 470 and my whole senior design project, which feels so good it’s unbelievable. Actually, at this point, I’m virtually done. I have one more exam to take next Tuesday, and that’s it. As for 470, we got our project done and working by the deadline, which was seriously awesome. Had you asked me last Monday or Tuesday if it was going to be done, I definitely wouldn’t have committed to anything. So being able to get it all finished, synthesized and passing all of the test cases by Friday was definitely a good thing. Let’s just not talk about how much sleep I got that week. It wasn’t pretty, and I’m still paying for it.

It’s weird, not having much left to do. All semesters are like that, but this one is different from most. Usually I’m ready to get out of A2 and be somewhere, anywhere else, doing something, anything different, safe in the knowledge that in a short period of time I’ll be back. Back here, in the same grind, doing what’s familiar and comfortable (if not always terribly enjoyable).

This time, though, I don’t want to leave. Oh sure, I’m ready to leave school, homework, exams and projects behind. Mostly I’m ready to leave behind the part of college where you have class all day and then do homework all night.

And I’m even “ready” to leave my friends… but I don’t want to. There is a difference. If it came to the point where I had to leave for California tomorrow, I would, but that doesn’t mean I want to.

I got the chance to hang out with some friends tonight, to go and get some late night milkshakes from Pizza Bob’s (S. State St., look it up if you’re in A2). And I had a great time. We got milkshakes, and stood outside for almost an hour just sipping on them, taking silly pictures, and talking and laughing about the most random things. And it occured to me, I don’t have enought days left in Ann Arbor to hang out with all of my friends. I could seriously have a month just to chill with people, and it wouldn’t be enough. Agh!

I guess I’ll just have to make the best use of the time I have. I guess that’s the best we can ever do.

(I was planning on posting more, but I’m tired and lazy, and the words just aren’t coming tonight…)

(Note: This post was started when I was awake. It was “finished” when I basically passed out on the futon. It’s now being posted about 24 hours later, when I’m again almost falling asleep… I think I do hate sleep or something.)

Is it just me, or should it be significantly warmer right now than it is? Now granted, I’m sitting outside as I write this, waiting for the bus (stupid 30min bus schedule…), wearing sandals (my feet are really the only part of me that’s cold). Some people would say that it’s far too early in the year to be wearing sandals, especially after dark.

Those people, as they often seem to be in these posts, are again wrong. There is no such thing as too early in the year to wear sandals. (California and I are going to get along just fine.)

So there’s not really anything new with me. Still too much wrok to do, still not enough time to do it. The 470 project is progressing, though not as quicklyu as I’d like, especially since I’ts due on Friday. And since I have two finals on Thursday and a presentation due on Friday as well. (The backlight on my la[ptop just died again, which meas I’m typing blind and will have pleanty of typos to correct. Purchase #1 is definitely going to be a new Mac laptop (well, maybe food wil be #1.)j

(I have to asay, typing an entire block of text blind is kinda interesting, We’ll see how good Word’s auto correct is…)

(Several hours later… had to get some Pizza House with the sister.)

So it turns out that Word’s auto correct isn’t very good. I thought about fixing that paragraph, but… nah.

Well, I’m so tired that I’m almost dropping my laptop as I sit here on the futon, so I’m gonna call it a night.

Guten nacht.

Ok, so that’s a lie. But looking at my sleep patterns, you might think that was the case. Take tonight for example. Last night, I got like 2 hours of sleep. Around 11pm, one of my 470 partners told me that I should go home and get some sleep, because there was no way I could think clearly enough to do any good. He was right, of course.

But did I come home and get the 8-9 hours of sleep I need, want, and possibly even deserve (though, some would contend that any college student that thinks they deserve sleep are guilty of heresy)? No, of course not. First I went upstairs and visited with Jeremy and Liliana, played some video games, and just vegged out. For like 2 hours. Why? Nothing more complicated than that I felt like it. Should I have gone to sleep? Probably.

And yet here I am. Posting on my blog instead of sleeping. Why? Well, some might say that I’m just giving into peer presure from those that update their own blogs more frequently, and want everyone else to do so too. They’d be wrong (well… not totally).

No, the simple fact of the matter is that, unlike most nights, or days, or any other time when I might have the opportunity to do so, I actually feel like writing tonight.

And that in and of itself is dangerous. See here’s the thing you have to understand; I’m far, far more likely to want to write when I’m exhausted. Some of it’s that I’m in a more contemplative, philosophical mood. Some of it might be boredom (though that usually induces sleep. Exhibit A: Me falling asleep during the review session for my 461 exam today. And Ranjan didn’t even have the decency to wake me up. I suspect he was, as usual for that class, completely zoned out).

No, the real reason that it’s dangerous is that I start to let my guard down, and relax the walls that ordinarily keep my thoughts bouncing around in my head, safe from public view. The irony is, of course, that I was reminding a friend just the other day of the value of relaxing walls and letting other people share in your life.

If we’re all totally honest, we all put up walls. Some are to keep ourselves from being hurt by others maliciously. Some are to keep ourselves from being hurt by others unintentionally. And some, we put up to protect ourselves from, who else, ourselves.

The danger, of course, is never letting anyone in. More dangerously, never letting ourselves in. Most dangerously, not letting God in. One thing I’ve definitely learned over the past year is, God knows what’s best for me, even when I think he’s wrong, even when I think I’m right, and even when I’m downright angry at him. I usually just can’t see the big picture.

… and now it’s time for sleep.

Now there’s a nice, overly dramatic title. But in some ways that’s how I feel, so it works.

So it’s April 2. Classes end in 16 days. Graduation is in 27 days.

I start work in just over 2 months.

Where did the time go?

I mean, I knew it was coming eventually. And I’ve been waiting for it for a long time. I think I started wanting to be done with college sometime during my sophomore year (well, done with classes at least).

And that’s pretty much how I feel now. I’m ready to be done with lectures; I’m ready to be done with homework and projects and late night group meetings. I’m ready to be done with doing work that has no ultimate purpose, other than my own instruction. I’m ready to stop sacrificing sleep and my weekends to work on schoolwork. I’m ready to leave all of that behind, and I’m happy that I soon will be.

What I’m not happy about leaving is everything else. Ready? Sure. I’m not going to stop all forward momentum in my life, just so I don’t have to “grow-up.” (Though in some ways I hope I never “grow-up.” Adults (which I usually don’t think of myself as a part of) take things far too seriously.))

(Don’t you love thoughts inside of thoughts? Double parenthesis for the win.)

I’m not happy about leaving all of my friends. I’m not happy about leaving Cru, New Life, or DCO. I’m not happy to be leaving behind video game nights with friends, or milkshake runs to Pizza Bobs, hanging out at the HKN events, or throwing around a football with my sis’ at 2am.

Tonight was probably the last Pops Orchestra concert that I’ll probably ever go to. Certainly the last one where I’ll be there to watch Ranjan and Kathy play. And I wasn’t even sure I was going to go until about 30 minutes before hand. But I’m immensely glad that I did.

Let’s face it, there are certain things in life that you just can’t get back. Moments that, once gone, will never come again. When I look back on my college career, it’s not school that I wish I had spent more time on, and it’s not the school that I’ll miss. I mean sure, my gpa could be higher, but do a couple of tenths of a point really matter?

No, it’s the people I wish that I had spent more time with, and the people that I will miss. And while goodbye never really means goodbye between friends, and despite advances in communications that make it easier than ever to stay in touch, it’ll never be the way it is now ever again.

Better? Maybe.
Worse? Hopefully not.
Different? Undoubtedly.