This week marks the start of my final semester of Elon. It’s not my last first anything – not my last first day, not my last first semester. It’s my last. My final; the true beginning of the end.
These days have to count – not just toward graduation, but also toward the greater good I will have done by being a student here. I did not make it through this place alone. I had mentors and big sisters and confidants and friends. There were people that made this experience more than worthwhile.
Yes, this semester is about enjoying my final moments with friends and classmates, even acquaintances whom I may never see again. But it is also about readying the elevator to send it back down. I stepped on the Elon elevator in 2012 and it has been up, up, up since then.
When I think about the people who sent me their elevators, I can’t help but smile. There is the muscular but sweet teacher from a small Connecticut town near mine, without whom my parents my have been much more concerned about sending me so far away. Then there is the jokey law student who was only a year above me but always felt like an older brother. There is also the flock of beautiful ladies who left Elon to pursue separate goals, but collectively mothered me into a fresh wave of womanhood.
These people sent their elevators down to me, to us, the class of 2016. They moved on to things greater than Elon, things Elon prepared them for but could not give them. I hope to do the same in a few short months. But first, I must finish out my undergraduate duties – as mentor, as big sister and as mother duck.
When I step off of the graduation stage and out of the ever-ascending Elon elevator on May 21, I’d like to know that I have left as much wisdom and hope in it as I was given during my first few years under the proverbial oaks.
109 days left, Class of 2016. Make them count.
These days have to count – not just toward graduation, but also toward the greater good I will have done by being a student here. I did not make it through this place alone. I had mentors and big sisters and confidants and friends. There were people that made this experience more than worthwhile.
Yes, this semester is about enjoying my final moments with friends and classmates, even acquaintances whom I may never see again. But it is also about readying the elevator to send it back down. I stepped on the Elon elevator in 2012 and it has been up, up, up since then.
When I think about the people who sent me their elevators, I can’t help but smile. There is the muscular but sweet teacher from a small Connecticut town near mine, without whom my parents my have been much more concerned about sending me so far away. Then there is the jokey law student who was only a year above me but always felt like an older brother. There is also the flock of beautiful ladies who left Elon to pursue separate goals, but collectively mothered me into a fresh wave of womanhood.
These people sent their elevators down to me, to us, the class of 2016. They moved on to things greater than Elon, things Elon prepared them for but could not give them. I hope to do the same in a few short months. But first, I must finish out my undergraduate duties – as mentor, as big sister and as mother duck.
When I step off of the graduation stage and out of the ever-ascending Elon elevator on May 21, I’d like to know that I have left as much wisdom and hope in it as I was given during my first few years under the proverbial oaks.
109 days left, Class of 2016. Make them count.