Generally, I've avoided falling prey to the influx of study-days activities. This is not precisely because I feel the need to study a lot during study days. Indeed, now that I think about it, I think it would be impossible to spend 96 hours on the three papers that generally comprise my finals week, even if I wanted to for some completely insane reason. Rather, I don't go to stuff during study days because if I have nothing I have to go to all day, it will pretty much take the dorm going up in flames to get me to leave my room.
This year, though, a weird thing has happened. On Facebook, I've responded "yes" to not one but five events between now and Saturday. I plan on going out tonight, despite Finnys - Notre Dame's Wednesday night hotspot, for the uninitiated - being my #1 least favorite place on this planet. I'm seeing a show tonight, I'm going to an Undertones concert on Friday (my first ever, because I'm not a desperate, thirsty freshman*), I've signed on to drive friends to dinner and a musical at the Catholic Worker on Saturday, and on top of it all, I have four papers to write that I'm trying earnestly to make my best ever.
[*: I'm a desperate, thirsty senior. Get it right.]
What's happened to me? Have I started to like people? Am I making a desperate last-second attempt at grade-grubbing? Do I have a brain tumor?
Well, assuming that the last one's not true (fingers crossed), it's none of those. As much as I hate myself for this sentimentality, it's a second-semester senior thing. My time at ND is dwindling - I had my last college class of all time today, for God's sake - and any second in my last weeks here not spent doing something is a second wasted.
Notre Dame, I wish I'd done everything on Earth with you.
Although doing everything on Earth with Leonardo DiCaprio would suffice.
Now don't get me wrong. I've been able to do a lot of awesome stuff in the past four years, and, cliched as it is, there's almost nothing I look back on with regret. I'm confident that my friends are the coolest kids around, and if I FOMO'ed about fun time with friends at any point along the way, I've long forgotten it by now. I've lucked my way into a great set of extra-curriculars and even some truly grade-A classes over the years. I spent half a year living in an apartment in Europe whose monthly rent value is about equal to the value of my car, and I've somehow convinced the powers that be to send me back to Europe for a whole year this time starting in August. I've run into famous people from Condoleezza Rice to Taylor Swift just by showing up to my own school's football games. It's been a good run.
But in two and a half weeks, I'll be an alumna of this university and not a student. My cool-kid friends will move to all corners of the planet, my extra-curriculars will take in new classes of freshmen to replace the last year's seniors, and South Dining Hall will serve thousands of helpings of four-cheese pasta that I will no longer be here to eat.
So in the next eighteen days, I hope you'll help me commit to a challenge. Am I going to that experimental performance art thing we saw on Instagram? Yes. Would I like to try that restaurant we've been talking about going to since spring of 2012? Yes, I would. Am I free for coffee tomorrow or for sitting around on x or y night watching Netflix and talking about life for enough hours to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy? Yeah probably, if you're cool.
Admittedly, a fair portion of the time between now and next Friday will be devoted to my finals. I've finally managed to take a schedule of classes that I actually enjoy all of, and I intend to finish them off fairly respectably. But if you ask me about my homework and I can prove I'm not slacking off, hold me accountable for saying yes. Yes to love (although really if you're tryna date me at this point what's been the hold up for the past four years, ahem), yes to life, yes to staying in less for once.
I wish I'd done everything on Earth with you, Notre Dame - and in the next 18 days, I plan to come as close to that as I possibly can. Cue the Lana Del Rey, y'all. Let's get forever wild.
