The Ever-Looming Week Of Scrambling Like Chickens With Our Heads Cut Off (Or Better Yet, Week Of Temporary Insanity)

Finals Week is hovering like an over-protective mother and I don't like it. I've never been fond of (nor ever really experienced) the over-protection and/or hovering of parents, hence the comparison.

This week of grade-sloshing, head-hitting, energy drink-slamming, binge eating (or starving because meal plan points have long ago vanished)... this week of giving speeches, cramming for multiple choice tests (Which am I lacking most? A. Sleep B. Food C. Sanity D. A working immune system), 10-page essays, group projects, workshop revisions.. the list does, inevitably, go on.

The major difference, however, in this finals week (as compared to last semester's finals week) is the fact that summer is a beat away. We not only have to worry about taking an armful of clothes home for 3 weeks around Christmas, we have to worry about taking everything, packing everything. This time around, I'm not going home. I'm heading straight for Sandusky, Ohio with my pillow and sheets in one hand and my birth certificate and license in the other.

My (only) final (aside from four daunting essays) ends around 3pm on Friday the 7th, and then I'll be making my way to work for the summer.

I can't say I'm super excited to start this thing. There are still a few decisions to be made, a few worries to let go of, a few hugs to give. As much as I'm ready to be done with this semester's classes, I don't know if I'm ready to experience what I'm about to experience. Look, I can barely even write it. It hasn't yet rolled off my tongue with ease, or at all, really.

So, finals. My sixth semester at Behrend is quickly coming to a close. I'll be a senior, a senior (!!!) when the summer is over, and even contemplating that word brings on a near panic attack. I'm almost there. I'm almost done (with this chapter of my life, at least).

It's frightening.

Now to get reallly off topic with post - You know how you dream of high school when you are in elementary? You dream of college when you're in high school? Well, now that this Bachelors degree is almost in my hands, I have no idea what I'm dreaming about. Grad school was only a recent thing... it seems as if my plans have always been set somehow, and now I'm getting to this point in my life that is actually, strikingly, blank. I can do anything. I can go anywhere.

It's just...weird, this freedom, this unplanned future. Weird.