So finals week has rolled around and yesterday was the last day of classes. Today is the university appointed ‘Study Day’. Its a little hard to believe that Spring 2010 has flown by like that. With the Snowpocalypse of January and February everything seems to have melted away, including time. Now it is the month of May and it will soon by a whole year since I moved to Maryland. So much has changed. The day I got off that plane in Reagan Airport in May of last year, I was not the Jenny I am now. That defiant, selfish, naive girl seems to have vanished entirely. The people I thought I was too close to live without have now become the people I wish to avoid. Yet somehow the people I left at home three years ago seem to have my thoughts constantly running back to them. I guess time is supposed to have that effect on you, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy.

I sit here in my usual surroundings as familiar faces whiz by every now and then. It is expected that the same space that is usually filled with the sound of chatter and laughter has now been reduced to a dull murmur as everyone fills the air with pensive thoughts and academia. I am not a fan of ‘Study Day’. The end of the semester is probably always going to be my least favorite time, and honestly I thought I would be more thrilled about the approaching summer. The truth is that I’ve gone and fallen in love with a space in time and with the routine I’d developed for myself these passed few months. I’ve grown so comfortable in the path I’ve been taking and now that I realize I’m at a fork, I’m panicking slightly. People are going to be spreading out this summer. This isn’t like the summer of 17, when everyone just stayed in town and got drunk by 4 every afternoon. Or the summer of 20 when no one every went anywhere because no one ever really leaves Texas. Now I’m facing a summer that’ll take the people I’ve grown accustomed to, to the likes of the Appalachian trials, Montreal, Mexico, Senegal etc. I guess as you get older people go further away. But the season has adventures in store for me too, London, Houston, perhaps Paris (France, not Texas) and with that comes a host of photographs. I suppose I don’t really have anything to be worried about. Even if the people I know are all over the place (world), I guess I’ll be too preoccupied to notice.

Since yesterday was the last day of classes, and in light of that the Stamp Student Union people decided to serve free pancakes to the hard working, falling over themselves studying students of Maryland. So who else would they have whip up and serve these pancakes but the Co-op? I was waiting around, doing my work, hoping to stay late enough to score some free pancakes, around 930pm a line starts forming, but by 10pm the line was a considerable length. Figuring we might need an extra hand in the kitchen I run in to help. I was in for a ride. For one, the numerous people in the line were not the usual co-op faces we saw everyday, these were obnoxious, impatient freshmen. So I cracked eggs, flipped pancakes, refilled juices etc, and at some point, a party had developed in our beloved backroom. So while the line shortened as we churned out pancakes, we flew back and forth between the food on the grill and the hookah pipe in the backroom. We made it happen though, by the end of the night, everyone was fed, and the Stamp people were happy. I guess when you can manage taking shots of Rum out of measuring cups, everything else falls into perspective.