The weather has been unseasonably warm the past couple days in Oberlin, as it has been in much of the country. It was positively vernal on campus today with a high of about sixty and so I was thinking about Spring in Oberlin. I love Spring in Oberlin. I can't wait for it to start. But thinking about this led to my first Holy Shit I'm Going to Graduate moment.
The warm weather triggered thoughts of what will come next. For the first time in my life I don't know. Every year before this the answer has been more school. Maybe that's in the future for me--I know that it is for a lot of Oberlin students--but it certainly not for me next year. Allow me to be dramatic and say that it is like staring into any abyss.
In some ways high school seniors are familiar with this feeling, though that's a bit different. And I know that the inability to anticipate what comes next will recur in all of our lives.
But like the warm weather, when it hit me this week it was a surprise. For the past three years I have gotten comfortable in Oberlin. I always had a pretty good idea of what would come next. Fall Semester, Winter Term, Spring Semester, each with their own repetitions and slight alterations. After a while a student here can start to feel like life is centered around Tappan Square. (This is not a bad thing and I believe it is common at most colleges, just not with Tappan Square.)
Anyway, that is how I'm feeling on this warm afternoon. Thinking about three months from now. In the meantime, I will be enjoying Spring in Oberlin while it lasts for the next couple days and into the last few months of college. It will be good to finish my thesis and I'm looking forward to sitting in Wilder Bowl drinking beer on a Friday afternoon with a dozen friends. I can't wait for softball games, commencement week, bike rides around Lorain County and all the other fun stuff that comes with springtime.
