Good-bye's

Even talking to my mom today about the parking situation here at school for commencement next week brought tears to my eyes. People who know me know that I am a crier. I cry when I get frustrated. I cry when I'm stressed. But more often than anything else, I feel sad when things end. I cried when my mom and dad got rid of our old burgundy Volvo station wagon. I cried when I "graduated" from Mrs. Cutler's 1-3rd grade class. I cried again when I missed field day to go check out a new school, and then I cried two years later when I switched back to my old elementary school. I tried for months to figure out a way to stay at the art high school I went to south east of Washington, DC when my dad wanted to move the family cross-country. Well, we moved anyway, and I cried. I cried when I left the high school I ended up graduating from, a small intimate program that I spent my senior year at in Southern California. I even remember the end of the summer before I started MICA, being in the car with my costuming mentor and good friend Randy, and thinking as we drove down a mountainside to the haunted theatre in Santa Paula, we're never going to get to spend as much time together as we have this past two years. Every year, I tend to be one of the first people back on-campus, and one of the last people to leave. Some of it is my lack of organization in moving, but some of it, too, is that I don't want experiences to end. As a camp counselor, I always head up for work week, to get there before everyone else does, and tend to leave with the last round of campers. And now, my time at MICA is coming to an end, and I can't say this has been the most productive couple of semesters here, but I'm sad to go. I suppose it just takes me a little while to acclimate. I like some time to figure out what the pecking order is, where I stand. Now, I find myself graduating. Have I met my chair's expectations of me at a earlier point? Probably not. I remember at one point feeling been there, done that, I'm the expert, and now I know more than ever how much I haven't done, how little I do know.

Hello, My name is L, and I'm an adult.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to go to the Maryland College Personnel Association conference and graduate school fair and I had the pleasure of running into another Suitland Visual Arts grad who is getting his Masters' in Student Affairs. Joe is two years ahead of me and is a hall director at Shippensburg in Pennsylvania. What's pretty exciting right now is there is going to be a show of 20 years of art program graduates at Suitland next year, and I am really excited to see what everyone's up to. That being said, I'm not upset at all about going into Student Affairs, because I know know know that that's what I am meant to do. I can improve students' experiences at school and impact their development as college students and adults, and I can do it in an artists' community like MICA, RISD, SVA, Cooper, Savannah, Memphis, CCA, SAIC, or Parsons. It was fantastic to be with this highly-specialized group of individuals who work in student affairs, people at all stages in their careers, from graduate students to entry-level to shining stars in their professions, the future president of the ACPA. I made business cards, hobnobbed, won a pen set, ate cake, enjoyed myself thoroughly despite the strange business-casual appearances. And everyone was SO friendly, these are extroverts, amazing men and women who have dealt with crisis and care to their residents and students.