I figured it was my last Amherst-Williams game while in college, and I’d just finished up a hard week of work, and I had absolutely no idea what else to do with my friend here, so I dragged her along for the ride.
The fact that it was my last Amherst-Williams game was basically the only reason I was going, but for some reason I didn’t think about it too much. Instead, it was watching the piece on College GameDay with all the football players who talked about their last football game that really brought home the idea of “lasts” for this year.
The word, especially now, is thrown around so carelessly that I’ve almost started to become immune to it. Our last pre-registration. Our last Homecoming as an undergrad. Our last Luau. After my geology field trip last week, my professor said, “Only one more semester to go, Audrey!” I’ve been reminded so much that my time is limited here that I’m starting to forget that it is—ironic as that may sound. And I know it will only get worse as my senior year progresses.
There’s no question that a part of me is very ready to leave Amherst. But it’s difficult to understand what “last” really means, or to understand exactly how it affects me. I guess I feel like it should mean something, or that I should feel a certain way, act a certain way, knowing that something is the last time I’ll ever do something. But I don’t, not quite.
There’s just a strange knowledge, a strange pre-nostalgia that pervades everything, knowing that in time I will probably miss a lot of things about Amherst, even if right now I can’t stand thinking about going to Val again or writing another paper for a class. I’m still too involved in my life here to appreciate the significance of it, and I think I also can’t, and don’t want to, really know what it means. It’s a little too much pressure.
I’ve always hated people who’ve urged me to seize the day, to make the most out of everything, because I’ve never known how to do that without compromising other things. And I always wonder whether I’ve done enough “seizing,” whether I’ve taken enough risks in the past, if I’m throwing enough caution to the wind now.
Over the summer, I didn’t quite agree with my alum friends who said that they would give anything to be back here, who talk about how beautiful the campus is. Part of me still wishes I’d gone to a college with a campus like Yale’s or even Mt. Holyoke’s, with gothic buildings and a gated campus. Strangely enough though, viewing the campus through the eyes of a visitor made me see Amherst in a different light.
I do often forget the simple beauty that Amherst has, with the Holyoke range and the homey feel of our slightly mismatched brick buildings, and I’m grateful to my friends for allowing me to see it, in what some people have already reminded me as my last fall here.
I wish people would stop telling me to make every moment count and reminding me that “college is the best years of your life” and of exactly how much time I have left here. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know. I think the problem is that we’re listening to the words (and the wisdom?) of people older than us, who have already had the time to look back, who have a legitimate reason to be nostalgic.
We’re not there yet. Right now, I’m just trying to deal with everything coming at me—with my friends suddenly becoming employed, with school work and the existence—or absence—of personal drama. In time, I will be. But not now.