What can I say about today? Woke up early, at 6, and headed out of the house around 6:35. I was 10 or 11 minutes late to my Poli 1 final but I crunched my way right though it and used my notes generously. With a 2 and a half hour break until my next class I decided to snap some photos around campus in the summer morning, a still intimate and surreal feeling for some strange reason, and looped back to the library to try reading some books. The ones I got were kind of boring so about 10 minutes in I just started playing Tomodachi Life, Mario Kart, and Animal Crossing New Leaf. The library was very quiet, not many people around on the second or the first floor at all. Around 11:15 I headed out to photography and our final critique went a bit slowly. I was a bit quiet. The feedback I got for my double exposure print from Prof. Teng stands out to me now -- it's loaded with texture. Loved Matthew's double exposures, wish I spoke up about that. Final critique went on until 1:50, and I headed right out. Got a burger, some fries, and -- for the first time in months and months -- a small coffee with a couple packs of sugar and half and half. Yum yum. Last meal here, might as well splurge :-) Was going to watch it over an episode of Frasier but wound up watching it over "The Secret Lives of Buddy and Sally" from the Dick Van Dyke Show when he's trying to figure out if they have a side hustle or not. Finished eating, walked to the parking lot but right before crossing the street I thought, am I going to regret not taking more photos for this last visit to campus? So I turned around and walked over around more of the west side of De Anza and took some more photos. Although they're a touch too composed to be landscapes, I think they capture enough of the essence of this place. The entire time making these final shots I felt a deep sense of melancholy, one that I hadn't felt in a long time, and it got me thinking about my very first Fall quarter here in 2021 where I would sit outside in the cooler and cooler autumn air over Zoom calls for Statistics 1 because I was so scared to go into the library or the dining hall. I also thought about the fact I haven't been in many of the buildings here at all, as well. My excitement turned quickly into this thought on repeat -- I'm going to miss this place, I'm going to miss this place, I'm going to miss this place. But it was the right kind of missing, the good kind, the almost clichéd sentiment following the triumph of finally, fucking finally, these three years are over. So I walked into the dark parking lot and I took a couple last photos and I drove my home, carefully, with patience, not wanting a car crash after working so hard to get here. I got home to find my mom fussing over some stuffed bittermelon soup, and a great bell of a feeling rung throughout me: It's over. The day gets goopy after that. From 6 to 7:30 I played Terraria, trying to progress the game; and I intermittently checked my Gmail and Canvas for any last bits of assignments. But otherwise, this was it.
"[Growing up] is hard and nobody understands." // https://www.homestuck.com/story/2391