{"id":22773,"date":"2017-04-18T16:36:24","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T20:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=22773"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:59:07","slug":"paiges-blog-last-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2017\/paiges-blog-last-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Paige's Blog – Last Words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Paige's Blog – Last Words\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Last Words<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019ve written this blog<\/a> over the course of the year, I\u2019ve done my best to be honest<\/a> about my experience \u2014 as a Carleton<\/a> student, as an English<\/a> student, as a fifth-year student<\/a>. Sometimes that honesty has simply been to represent various moments as truthfully as I could. My mother can probably attest that school is, and always has been, a stressful experience for me. I didn\u2019t hide that. But here\u2019s the thing: school \u2013 learning, reading, writing, discussing \u2014 has also always been one of the greatest (in all meanings of the word) aspects of my life. I love it, and, when I\u2019m not stressed, I miss it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graduation has been on my mind a lot this year, perhaps too much, because it means change<\/a>; it means, eventually, no school. It means I need to define myself by something else. I wonder if that fear (yes, fear) has tinged my writing<\/a>, making things out to be worse than they are; I wonder if I\u2019ve shown too much of the uncertainty and doubt, and not enough of the good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a retraction. As I said, I\u2019ve been honest. I stand by the experience of sometimes crippling anxiety<\/a> that comes with life, and with this time of life. But this is<\/em> an amendment: it\u2019s been wonderful, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure I understood what was really happening to me \u2014 what it really meant to me to be in university \u2014 until my third year, when I received a book for Christmas: The Opposite of Loneliness<\/em> by Marina Keegan. Keegan died in 2012, five days after she graduated from Yale, and The Opposite of Loneliness<\/em> is a book of her essays and short stories, published posthumously. The titular essay, \u201cThe Opposite of Loneliness,\u201d written the day before her commencement ceremony, describes her<\/em> experience at university, which she characterizes with this feeling: the opposite of loneliness. Read this essay. It is beautiful. It captures the strange connectedness you feel when you\u2019re in school, the affinity you have with people you don\u2019t even know, because of your shared experience \u2014 and it captures the fear of losing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one of the first times in my life I\u2019m moving on from something I am afraid to lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as I feel that I will be nothing \u2014 vaporous, unanchored \u2014 without school, I know that isn\u2019t entirely true, for the simple fact that the benefits I\u2019ve received from coming here<\/em> to university haven\u2019t been solely institutional. It\u2019s not the routine \u2014 the periodic essay-writing, note-taking, library-book-returning grind \u2014 that defines me here. It is the people, the learning, the opportunity I have had to grow, change<\/a>, discover, read, express \u2014 to feel not lonely<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am afraid to lose: the inspiring and talented writing community I have found through the English Lit Society<\/a>, the loose comradery of making small talk before a lecture, the constancy of quietly working in the same spot on campus (approximately every day for four years) and feeling at home there. These are the good things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am grateful for the sentiment and poignancy of a final lecture, for the collection of books I have amassed (which still spills off my shelves, and soon, I guess, will be stored in boxes as I move back home), for the friends I made and the things I wrote. These are the things I am leaving, the things I hope you have had and will have. These are the things that have changed me in the best way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One more: I am grateful for the invitation I received in September to blog my year, which has allowed me to self-indulgently self-reflect on a public scale \u2014 but also to express and share the storm-cloud of emotions stirred up by my final year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Words As I\u2019ve written this blog over the course of the year, I\u2019ve done my best to be honest about my experience \u2014 as a Carleton student, as an English student, as a fifth-year student. Sometimes that honesty has simply been to represent various moments as truthfully as I could. My mother can probably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[294,25,849],"tags":[361,362],"class_list":["post-22773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paiges-blog","category-student-blogs","category-student-voices","tag-life-in-english","tag-paiges-blog"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22773"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53661,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22773\/revisions\/53661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}