endings

{Maybe, if you're with a group of friends who'll never be together again, all your lights will shine at the same time and you'll know, and then you can hold each other and whisper, "This was so good. Oh my God, this was so good."}

I read this today.

I've been so preoccupied with uncertainty surrounding job prospects and my increasing cynicism of academia that I completely forgot that my graduate school career will (hopefully) be ending in several months. This is it!

I love being a grad student, and I have never once regretted spending the past 5 years in a warm, supportive, collaborative, and intellectually stimulating environment. I still can't believe that I get paid to think, write, and design my own experiments!

What's most important to me though, is the friends I've made while I was here, and the experiences I got to have: commiserating with fellow grad students about failed experiments over wine, dance parties and murder mysteries, travelling to warm places each winter for conferences, road trips, mentoring students, finding my passion for teaching, meeting my partner, training in the martial arts. I am so thankful that I decided to invest this part of my life here.

What I'm not prepared for though, is change. Again. I had the same feelings of anxiety when I started university and then grad school, and I have to do it again - move on to something new. All my grad school friends are moving away to new jobs, and I don't want to get left behind. But part of me is scared as hell, and sad that this part of my life is ending. It feels bittersweet because I am ready to leave, but I want to hold on to these experiences for as long as I can.

I will have to appreciate my last few months here in spite of all the nail-biting and complaining and tearing out of hair that will undoubtedly happen during dissertation writing and defense-preparation.

This was so good.