A question I get asked is how I am enjoying full time graduated life. I always find that a bit difficult to answer, because I do not think I have fully processed what being out of school actually means yet. A lot of my friends are graduating this year, and some even next year, so even after starting full time work, I have still had reasons to go back. I have been out of school for a year now, but it still feels like I have one foot in and one foot out. More than anything, I think I have been struggling to feel closure.
McMaster
I took the day off last Tuesday and went back to Hamilton for the engineering capstone expo, and it was genuinely so nice to catch up with everyone and spend time with so many friends in one place again. A lot my friends and myself realized that this day might be one of the last times we are all together like this. It was not a dramatic moment or some big ceremonial sendoff. It just came through ordinary conversations and shared time together. But it was the first time being back at McMaster made me feel less nostalgic and more aware that a chapter was actually closing.
I think what makes this hard to articulate is that I do not even miss one specific activity. I miss how effortless it all used to feel. Board game nights playing Codenames, Avalon, or Catan, late night talks, dinners, even studying together the day before an exam all felt normal at the time. They were so regular that I never had to stop and think, “is this the last time?” Looking back now, I think what I am really grieving is not just those activities themselves, but the ease of access to that kind of shared life. Now that everyone is moving into different chapters of life, I find myself wondering whether there will ever be another season (maybe when folks start to marry up 👀) where bringing everyone together feels that easy again. I do not miss being a university student in itself, but I do miss the shared experiences that shaped me while feeling completely ordinary at the time.
Quiet Endings
Graduation is supposed to feel like a clean ending, but for me it did not. Maybe that is because meaningful chapters do not always end in ways that feel “official”. Graduation may have been the formal ending, but emotionally, the ending didn’t hit till now. Maybe what I have been struggling with is the fact that life does not always give us the kind of closure we expect. Not everything meaningful gets a grand final moment.
What made this week feel even more interesting was that the same realization kept showing up in different places. Thursday was my last cooking class, and over the last three months it was nice to spend time with people outside my usual bubble. While I’m not the closest with anyone at cooking class, sharing a collective experience for a few hours a week was very special. Then on the weekend, my soccer team wrapped up our final game of the spring season, and because a lot of the team is from Japan or still in university, people are also moving in separate directions as well. These are very different communities from my McMaster friends, but they pointed me toward the same realization: meaningful groups/moments are seasonal. They matter deeply, and then they quietly change.
Two Things Are True
I think that is what made this week feel both sad and beautiful. It is sad because life keeps moving whether or not you feel ready for it. There is always more that could have been shared, more conversations to have, more memories that could have existed. But I also think there is something beautiful about the fact that these endings feel hard at all. The hardest things to let go of are often the things that mattered most.
I think one thing this week showed me is how much of life I only seem to fully understand in retrospect. So many of the moments that shaped me most did not feel extraordinary while I was living them. I was only able to see the weight of those moments once they stopped feeling so easily available. To notice when something feels life-giving, when a group of people makes me feel grounded, and when an ordinary night is quietly becoming something I will miss one day.
Life never gives us direct emotional closure. Maybe sometimes closure is just the delayed realization that a chapter was shaping you more than you knew while you were inside it. Some of them taper off through ordinary weeks, until one day you realize they cannot stay open forever. That is sad, but maybe it is also part of what makes them so beautiful. The fact that it is hard to let go means there was something there worth holding onto in the first place.
I’ll leave this weeks reflection off with a quote from Winnie the Pooh:
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
Interesting Ideas
- JPMorganChase’s Annual Letter: I always love reading and listening to Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorganChase) in his annual letters and interviews, he’s a certified straight shooter and tells it like it is. I do admire certain aspects of his banks principles: fortress balance sheet, being well informed, never thinking “we’re cooked” and staying optimistic despite real risks.
- Becoming Wild: Feeding the Wild: This is a video about the nutrition team behind the Minnesota Wild. Nice to get an inside look on how disciplined professional athlete’s must stay to fuel their bodies for an 82 game season. Also, loved the segment at the end on grocery shopping (really is a hard skill that I’m still figuring out myself!)
- adulting diaries 💌 losing friends, what i eat ironman training, soft growth + letting go: I really respect how vulnerable and real Linda Sun’s content is. Her recent video reminded me of that Winnie the Pooh quote and it’s reassuring to see how other people also deal with similar themes.
- Why you DON’T Have lifelong friendships!: Was recommended this video by a friend. This was my first time listening to Dylan So and he’s very unfiltered haha. While I’m only about halfway through this video when writing this, I do align with the fact that we have to be strong internally, before we can enjoy external things. Figuring yourself out, and living to what you genuinely enjoy is probably the hardest problem to solve, but those who can do it, will see a massive difference in the quality of their lives.