got my plane ticket to Boston for August 27.

can’t wait to get the fuck off this coast.

Love/hate

So when it comes down to it…I really only have a month and a half left of school…two weeks of which are pretty much just packing/prepping for and taking finals so they don’t count really. And  despite being overjoyed with the ending of my sophomore year of college, I’m slightly nervous for the end of school. I haven’t been home for the summer in four years you see. And the longest I’ve been home since I graduated was a month this year at winter break. I’ve managed to skip town for large chunks of time by traveling to LA, Vancouver BC, roadtripping to San Francisco and all the way down the California coast and working at a summer camp in the forest for the past four summers.

Needless to say, May 16 to August 28 is a rather long time. I have to find a job, maybe find an internship and some friends. Stat. I am friends with a few people at home who I’ve been good friends with since elementary school but the overwhelming majority of people I went to high school with I haven’t talked to or seen since I got off the bus after my senior all night party two years ago. So when I make my triumphant return to the City of Roses I will be (mostly) friendless, relationship-less,(some what penniless), unemployed (but still covered under my dad’s health insurance…thanks Obama you’re a pal!) and will have minimal prospects on all fronts. I’m excited to go home but I can’t shake the anxiety. I’d like to enjoy my first summer at home in four years…no matter how different it will be since I was last there for long, hot July days, fireworks on the 4th of July and running around the city with friends.

I suppose Ed Droste was correct in the lyrics of “On a Neck, On a Spit” by Grizzly Bear. You really can’t go home again. And each time it really is different. But I’ll keep crossing my fingers that it will be better.

Oh! And on a slightly major side-note…I was nominated for a Society of Professional Journalists “Mark of Excellence Award” for best breaking-news photograph in a weekly college newspaper for Region 11 (includes California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Hawaii and Guam). I received at least 3rd place for the award and will find out my actual placing May 2.  I don’t know if I’ll get first place but I am up against only two other people at this point so here’s to hoping.  If I get first I go on to the national awards.

Round 2

I got accepted to the National Student Exchange program next year at University of Massachusetts – Amherst. Glad to know all my productivity and straight A’s and designation as a Presidential Scholar got me somewhere.

So anyway. I’m stoked. Preparing myself for snow. Preparing myself for having to teach people how to say “Oregon” correctly and correcting them when they think I’m from Portland, Maine. No. The other Portland. The one that was almost “Boston, Oregon” had the flip of a coin gone the other way. New adventures. No more forests. And did you know I’m out of school in a month and a half?