firsts and lasts

notes on graduating

The thing that no one tells you about endings is that they won’t announce themselves. The last spontaneous hangout won’t feel significant. It’ll just be a regular night: someone suggesting to get food, everyone saying yes. And only later, sometime later, will you realize that was the last time everything aligned like that.

Five years ago, a 19-year-old opened her acceptance email from the University of Waterloo and didn’t know what to do with herself. She was nervous about first-year CS courses, about making friends, about whether she’d be good enough. She had no idea what she was walking into. Neither did I — because that girl was me, and I’m only now starting to understand what those five years actually were.

Throughout the years, she would collect many “firsts”. The first time walking through the university campus. The first day of class, when she was so lost and confused that she questioned if she was in the right program. The first person she befriended while bonding over the hard assignments. The first midterm failed, even after studying for hours. The first interview she bombed and cried about for 2 days after. The first time she realized that things don’t get easier, you just become better at handling it.

And now, I’m experiencing all of my lasts. The last lecture of my undergrad. The last late night study session in the library, feeling the nervous energy of all the students around me. The last long conversation with roommates that starts at dinner and ends at midnight, wondering if we were ready for what comes next.

I want to tell her something, that 19-year-old standing at the beginning of it. Just to say: pay attention. Not to the big moments, which will take care of themselves, but to the ordinary ones. The lectures that leave you more confused than before. The ambient noise of students between classes. The specific way a Wednesday afternoon feels when you have nowhere to be. Because the strange thing about lasts is that you won’t know them when they’re happening.

But for every last, there will be a first. Soon, everyone will go on to the next step of their journey. Moving into new cities, settling into their first apartment, starting their first full time job. It’s a strange grief, knowing that things will never be the same again. But there is something beautiful in the idea that every person I’ve crossed paths with is building out a new life.

Waterloo will look the same next September. New students will complain about the geese, about the packed gym, about the grey skies. Someone will open an acceptance email and not know what she’s walking into.

I hope she pays attention.

waterloo, in the rare occasion where it doesn’t look grey