I offer a hearty congratulations to you, dear readers, for it is the end of the semester. Well, almost the end of the semester, shall we say?
How’s about we take a quick look back on these past three and a half months to briefly reminisce before looking ahead?
August brought the crushing realization that we’d be returning to Binghamton for another semester. Actually, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it was a crushing realization, but that depends on the person.
While my long aforementioned camp job was nice because of my co-counselor and the pay, the relaxation between the end of camp and the start of the semester was well-earned. Additionally, I hadn’t seen too many college friends over the summer, so I was more than glad to pack up the car with some help from the parents and drive back up to Binghamton for the last fall of my college career.
September, of course, brought the disastrous flood that the Southern Tier is still recovering from. Thankfully, the immediate recovery effort in the area, especially on campus, was immensely gratifying to hear about and to help with, no matter how insignificant it might’ve seemed at the time.
October and November didn’t necessarily bring anything major, but the postponed Restaurant Week finally returned to assist in revitalizing the community. And all during this time, there has been the hovering harbinger of homework, essays and exams, but it has all come to a head one final time for the fall Class of 2011.
This is the halfway point for those of us who are members of the Class of 2012, we who are finishing up our final year of college. We’ve stuck around for the full four years, even though there are those of us who are getting out in three years with their sights set on an early start to graduate school or have a career already in mind.
I give sincere and honest props to those who have sent in their applications and are waiting anxiously to hear back, or even to those who have started graduate-level courses already to get a head start on their post-grad careers.
But not everyone has his or her life planned out to a T. I’ve pushed my possible grad school plans off to the side while I’m branching out and networking to find some form of interest-appropriate employment after graduation. Through alumni contacts, I’ve made a bit of headway on a future after college.
This also goes for my department work at the radio station during the first half of this final year of my college career. All throughout my college career, I’ve explored a number of career options that would make me quite happy to have. As Billy Joel once said in an honorary graduation speech, “Find a job that makes you happy and you won’t work a day in your life.”
Well, that’s probably paraphrasing the proper quote, but the message still gets across.
Maybe I’ve gotten a little too ahead of myself here. Maybe I’m looking too far down the road, but then again, there’s nothing wrong with a good amount of foresight.
I wish all of you dear readers all the best on finals. Bring home that 4.0 for the semester, if that is what you have been striving for.
See you all in the leap year!