The Last Day of Classes

Melancholy. Empathy. Joy. Gratitude. Excitement.

These are the emotions that run through my heart during the last day of classes of my sophomore year at the little liberal arts college I attend. “Lift your head up. Leave your phone in your pocket. Look around you. What do you see? Who are you? Why are you here? How did you get here?” I think to myself on my short walk back from the academic buildings. There is so much to see in the faces that surround me. Every single person has a mind of their own, an emotion willing them to pick their feet up every step they take on this small green campus.

The professor reads a poem. Walt Whitman’s So Long, leaving us with the sound of his euphoric words rolling of her tongue. I gaze around the room. I’ve always preferred observing. Observing people’s faces and their reactions. What are they thinking? How do they feel? A girl. She’s a senior, 2 years older. Picking at her fingers, fixing short brown hair. Is she fighting back tears? The feelings inside me bubble up and I feel for her. Empathy takes me over. I see my future self in her, like a fog-covered mirror reflecting back. Our futures lie ahead of us, blurry and vague. Studying abroad in Italy, majoring in English. Who will I be when I am sitting in her seat?

Another professor hands out freshly baked banana bread, straight from her home. Everyone takes a piece politely. How am I so lucky to go to a school where professors hand out banana bread? A student sings “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” with her ukulele. I hold on to the lump in my throat, remember this moment, remember her voice. Hold on. Remember why you’re here and the people around you. Someone else reads their paper, bringing the class to another world entirely, and then we come back to this little classroom in this little building on this little campus in this huge world.

I am the quiet girl, the one observing too many details and writing about the Walt Whitman poem and the banana bread and these little moments that too many others have experienced without a thought. Unnoticed. I am the girl with the soft smile and overflowing mind, fighting back the lump in her throat on her last day of classes of sophomore year at her little liberal arts college.