Remembering

This is a time in my life when the honest-to-goodness most exciting thing are the facts that my cat snuggled like a little angel with me this morning for about 15 minutes and that my 10 miler on Sunday averaged a 9:45 pace. Oh, and the fact that I am well and truly playing hooky on running today due to the fact that I. Don't. Want. To. Which means that I may well have energy enough to do it tonight.

Funny how that works. Allow yourself to not have to and suddenly you want to. How does that make sense?

Anyways, along the lines of my reminiscing yesterday....

Three years ago, almost to the day I started the first day of my last year of college. I was ready to be done. I was stressed, tired of finals, midterms, and homework and just wanted to be out in the Real World. I'm not really sure what I envisioned the Real World to be like, and granted I do enjoy the everyday minutiae that makes adulthood what it is (don't ask me why but I take great pleasure in sitting down to write checks to pay bills...not the paying part, but the simple joy of writing checks, putting a stamp on it, and putting it in the mail...I doubt that I will ever fully switch to online bill pay due to the simple fact that I enjoy that so much), but I have since discovered that the Real World ain't all it's cracked up to be.

When thinking about that last year, I think about Tuesday morning meetings with the PolyReps, claiming tours and writing them in my planner in the special colored marker that denoted PolyReps (yes, I am that anal retentive...it was so I could see at a glance what needed to be done!). Walking backwards on those tours with the ease of long practice, joking with potential students and their respective entourages about warning me if I was going to run into anything (it only happened once or twice...and one time I tripped over a tree root and then a few moments after recovering I was tackled by a sorority sister determined to give me a hug...luckily everyone laughed).

I remember fondly telling those prospective students about the greatness of Cal Poly, how it boasts 19,231 students, 18,000 of which are undergrad; how it's been rated Best in the West for 20 years; how many of its departments are ranked number 1 or 2 in the nation; how its student to teacher ratio is about 20 to 1.

Man, if I could work for Cal Poly and live in Oregon, I would be set.

Also, I remember running with my roommate's dog and being so happy to see his overwhelming joy as I unleashed his full Aussie-puppyness and gave him full freedom to plunge ecstatically after ducks in the stinky lake near our house.

I remember bar nights with the girls, getting dressed up and tottering around on heels that would kill by the end of the night. Not drinking too much if at all, just dancing and laughing the night away.

Farmers' Market and late-night donut runs and Bali's trips. Whiling away hours in the University Union sleeping, studying, reading, or getting side-tracked from all of those by the friends that would inevitably walk by and end up sitting for "just a minute" until we all looked at our cellphones or watches and excused ourselves to rush to our next class.

Cooking too much food in my kitchen and inviting over all the boys and girls that I knew would come at the drop of a hat at the beckon of "lasagna!" or "pasta!" or "chicken!"

House parties, art projects, sitting in the grass in front of my department building talking to my parents on the phone about all the angst of a student. Roommate fights, drama, sorority scandal and fun, love, laughter, friends and impromptu "family."

Man, I miss college. Did I really have to graduate?

Ciao,
kc