{"id":36915,"date":"2021-04-19T19:14:26","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T19:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=36915"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:58:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:58:28","slug":"goodbye-undergrad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2021\/goodbye-undergrad\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, Undergrad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Goodbye, Undergrad\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n

By Emily Coppella<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I walked onto campus for the last time a few weeks ago I felt like I was both at home and trespassing. I blame COVID-19 for these contradictory feelings. It\u2019s upsetting to see my familiar haunts transform into literal ghost towns. I saw only a handful of people while wandering along the Rideau River, slowly making my way towards the quad. Instead of taking my usual daily walk around my student home in Old Ottawa South, I decided I could say a weird goodbye to my time at Carleton by physically walking it one last time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wind hadn\u2019t decided if it was winter or spring. The quad was bare, only speckled with a few scratchy leaves and my trusty boots that have helped me brave every Ottawa winter. I felt dismal, not only because of the weather, but because of how anticlimactic my undergrad suddenly felt. I was never too caught up in the idea of celebrating by walking across a stage, but I was looking forward to throwing a goodbye party with my Ottawa friends and chatting with my favourite professors in the English Department<\/a> lounge one last time. Fortunately, on a personal level, COVID-19 has only really impacted things \u201cI was looking forward to,\u201d and that in itself is something to be grateful for.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Emily
Emily Coppella<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

April of a final semester is made up almost entirely of me silently repeating to myself: \u201cOne day at a time.\u201d This is a coping mechanism I fall into when life gets really busy. If looking too far ahead makes me feel overwhelmed, I just think about today. It\u2019s like covering my ears and saying, \u201cLa la la, I can\u2019t hear you\u201d to far-future responsibilities and embracing the near-future ones with a grimace. It seems to work every year because I complete all my assignments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year though, my \u201cla la la\u2019s\u201d were particularly obnoxious, in part because completing schoolwork takes double the energy when everything is online, but also because I would be closing the chapter of my undergrad and leaving the city of Ottawa. Even while packing up my bedroom \u2013 which included significant heaving of brick-like Norton anthologies \u2013 I had loud music on to distract myself from what I was actually doing. I was a robot. I turned my emotions off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while gazing up at buildings I used to scurry around between lectures, that emotional safety valve spluttered. By the time I was walking around Dunton Tower, I was already teary-eyed \u2013 from the wind, I would say to anyone passing by \u2013 and confused. When you\u2019ve been in your undergrad for five years (thank you, Co-Op program<\/a>) you inevitably realize around the start of the fourth year that you\u2019re ready to move onto\u00a0the next thing,\u00a0<\/em>no matter how elusive that thing may seem. So I\u2019ve been ready to say farewell to my time at Carleton \u2013 at least for now \u2013 for longer than I thought, and yet at the same time, I felt unable to let it go. Perhaps this is how guardians feel when they drop their kids off at university. This push and pull of letting go and holding on is so bittersweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 How did the time fly by so fast?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to analyze this feeling of wanting to stay and wanting to move on while looking up at Southam Hall where I spent most of my English classes. This is a beautiful curse that falls on English majors. You have a tendency to analyze everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I concluded that I just wanted a little more time at Carleton. Perhaps if I had known in March 2020 that I wouldn\u2019t be able to return to on-campus learning, I would have milked my final months for all they were worth and felt satisfied at the end of this term. But, I truly believe that if COVID-19 had not happened, I would have felt just as conflicted about leaving. Carleton was so good to me that no matter how my undergrad ended, I would have always wanted \u201ca little more time.\u201d COVID-19 was an interruption, a challenge, but it didn\u2019t fundamentally change the conclusion of this chapter. I graduated. The class of 2021 graduated. And we did that <\/em>during a time like this!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I no longer feel like graduating was anticlimactic. Whether we were in a pandemic or not, I think my time at Carleton would have always ended quietly and softly. This is because walking on a stage or getting a diploma are all great forms of recognition, but the true goodbyes are in the quiet moments. They\u2019re often done alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So strolling around Carleton by myself with my constantly analyzing and constantly emotional English-major mind seemed like a perfect goodbye to me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Emily Coppella When I walked onto campus for the last time a few weeks ago I felt like I was both at home and trespassing. I blame COVID-19 for these contradictory feelings. It\u2019s upsetting to see my familiar haunts transform into literal ghost towns. I saw only a handful of people while wandering along […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[328,783,849],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emilys-blog","category-life-in-english-blog","category-student-voices"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36915","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=36915"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53643,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36915\/revisions\/53643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}