T A L K A B O U T N O S T O L G I A!

Graduation is coming up soon. I'm thinking about all my friends (All, really?) and how much I'm going to miss them. I'm thinking about the teachers and faculty here and the experience I've gotten from it. I'm pretty pleased. But, pretty isn't completely.

Emily asked me how I really felt about the two years I've spent here.

Every school is going to have problems. Every administration is going to be less than perfect. Every teacher, every student, every cafeteria is going to fall short of hopes. Overall, this is something no other school could offer us. These are people, like-minded peers, that we never would have met without coming here. This is an opportunity and a bucket full of chances that no other place could offer us. MSA gave us something that we can't get back, whether that is a bitter-sweet disposition, a knowledge of the art we plan to persue, or an eye-opener like finding out we may not want to be the artists we originally thought.

Everyone is going to leave this place on May 22nd, all my classmates, and they're going to be different. They're going to know how to mop, how to handle obnoxious, outrageous, and sometimes eccentric people. They're going to know what art means to them. They're going to miss it, in some ways at least. Most of us will visit MSA more than we visit each other. We're going to leave some of ourselves here and it's going to be replaced that day we cross the stage. When we ring the bell on campus. When we through those stupid looking hats. We're going to go to college shocked when our roommates don't clean up every Thursday.

I'm not sure I can speak for everyone when I say, "I'm glad it's finally over," but I know when I send out that count down every morning there are people that smile. I'm not sure, either, that I can speak for everyone when I say that I'm going to miss this place--but I can say to them that I'll miss lunch. God not the food, not the clapping from our seniors last year that we never got--I'll miss birthdays. I'll miss that we all knew each other--or at least were all friends on facebook and got the update that someone's birthday was coming up. I'll miss people standing on chairs and singing an off-key happy birthday to everyone.

Other things I'll miss, things I can barely think about without swallowing nostolgia like molten hot jello:

• piling on the elevator and riding up and down just to watch everyone get off


• the lunch ladies reminding us to smile


• how the floors creak in Johnson, but not how the lift in Johnson sounds...or shakes


• the ladies in the Y-hut that you only appreciate fully your senior year


• Miss Jana never going a day without saying something nice to me


• The time Miss Hirch said I would be famous


• Dr. Lebow, just in every sense. She should be in the encyclopedia, really.


• The Pig being The Pig and not Piggly Wiggly


• Bobo's when Anna Flemming worked there, and then continuing the tradition after she left


• Broma's


• Miss Moak always managing to make reading seem cooler than any other school could


• Coffee House


• The Coffee Shop


• Girls always wishing our floors were as exciting as the boys'


• The time 3rd floor was filled with balloons


• Fire drills


• actual "fires"


• my babies, the ones to whom I said, "Thanks a lot guys, now I have to come back!"


• Miss Jenny--the world's best secretary (which basically means she can do everything)


• countdowning--oh I will S O miss countdowning


• Seeing visuals working in the halls on amazing projects that are just ridiculous


• hearing vocals having sectionals in the halls


• saying, "Where is -insert senior theater name-?" "At rehearsal."


• wal-mart trips


• living with your best friends


• peer editing


• staying up all night trying to start to do homework


• collecting coke cans with maddie during first semester and having enough to build a christmas tree at christmas


• Mr. owens


• mr. owens


• mr. owens


• mr. owens


• loving everyone against my will


• being a total creeper and watching people out my window--god, I love that window

I'm scared. Totally scared and totally ready. If I was at my old school, had I not come here--I wouldn't be ready. I wouldn't feel this way. I would be waiting to leave, yes, but I would feel unprepared and uncertain. That's what MSA has given me. Assurance, security, certainty, a home other than my own--all new mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers. All new people to turn to. I never had that before. MSA is the eighth school I've been to--and in two years I'd found a home and a family.

I'm ready to go so I can come back, even though I still have to check in and give something to security.