The class of 2018 exits All Saints Chapel after their commencement ceremony. Photo courtesy of Sewanee’s Flickr.
By Lucy Rudman & Klarke Stricklen
Junior Editors
Ah, April, the time of the year where we have a 15-page paper open in one tab, and the withdrawal form in another. As students, drowning in studying and homework, one of our only comforts are our friends. The people we see and hug everyday, the ones whose smiles might come like lights on a cloudy day, and the ones who taught us to carry on after an “F.”
I would say that our friends are the reason we make it through the storm day-by-day. But, like I said earlier, it’s April. And guess what comes after April? May. Summer. Graduation. Parting ways.
We forget that April is the last month with many of our friends. They are all either graduating, conducting research, or even going off the grid to debate their return to this place. Our friends are leaving whether we like it or not, so, what now?
Do we call them everyday knowing there’s no reception in Peru, China, or even Africa? Are we supposed to waste the day away eating Dove chocolates and rewatching series we have already binged to death in our days of procrastination? Do we send lengthy letters and wait eagerly, for weeks, for their responses?
What do we do when we lose our most common ground, Sewanee? The security of knowing you’ll see them when you’re walking to class? In duPont? On the couch at a frat? Or what about the instant and given connection in being tied to the Mountain? In being tied to our unique community?
Friends, if you are reading this, do us a favor and keep in touch. If you have no service, grab our address before the eighth of May and write us a letter, if you will. Your words are always filled with kindness and relief. You make us get off the couch and watch real things, like the news, and care about real issues, like rampant inequality. We know you all are busy so we won’t bug too much, but we miss you and hope that your travels lead you back to us, someday.
For the rest of us, watching Sex and the City reruns and filling up on the food we think we cancel out with a twenty minute run does not help us. It is up to us to find our place without them, we were real people before, and we’ll be real people after.
Alexa, play “It’s So Hard To Say Say Goodbye” by Boyz II Men.