The last time I was a second semester junior, I found Pomona’s website for the first time (note: it was a much less shiny and attractive back in those pre-collegiate days, so embrace its modern beauty.) I remember breaking from my homework every ten minutes to revel in an e-view of super-cool colleges—obviously Pomona made a good impression—and to celebrate the notion that high school was almost over, and that I would graduate and ride off into the Claremont sunset.
Fortunately, that little plan worked out, and perhaps too well—I’ve just scheduled an appointment at the Career Development Office (CDO) to discuss which sunset I might ride into next. But this time, I do so with less enthusiasm. Because although the future excites me, part of me wishes to tighten my tendrils around Walker Beach and Snack’s peanut butter sandwiches and the view of the mountains and Pearsons’ wooden tables, and to never leave, ever.
Everyone here has made the same light joke that they want to stay forever, and that speaks to the (dare I say without sounding too melodramatic for both your and my sanity?) distinct Pomona magic. But that doesn’t help my imminent breaking heart, set to combust in May 2014. In honor of the beginning of the end, I’ve complied a list over the past week of little things I might usually under-appreciate at Pomona:
1) Waking up with a book on my stomach, and empty glass of tea on my windowsill, and California sunshine trickling through my blinds and onto my walls.
2) Rolling around on the floor with my roommate, setting homework goals throughout the night and resetting them after getting distracted by summer research and applications and Youtube videos and Choco-pies.
3) Stumbling through The Leviathan only to entirely re-learn it during lecture, despite having read exactly the same text as my classmates and professor.
4) Ordering bowties at Pitzer Pasta Lunch.
5) Feeling some secret camaraderie while studying in the SCC amongst twenty other silent students.
6) Plopping down at the dining hall with one friend, only to have four others come and go, talking and eating and laughing and reading.