Goodbye to my Vassar Student Email

I’ve been out of college for a year now.

1 year and 9 days to be precise. I say that to myself, and I still really can’t believe it…graduation feels just like yesterday and also a million years ago all at the same time. I often find myself reflecting on what I’ve done since the day I shook hands with Cappy and said goodbye to what had been my home for the past four years. So much about me has changed in just a years time and I’ve had to learn so many hard life lessons (ugh adulting, amirite?) but I’m so incredibly proud of the person I’m becoming and the path that I’m on.

Although I have been grinding on to my post-grad future, the impending event that is losing my Vassar student email has been haunting me. I know it seems silly, but I have been absolutely dreading losing it and my collection of emails that I have compiled over the last 4-5 years. Anyone who knows me really well knows these two things about me: 1) I absolutely love notes and writing them and will keep them for literally forever and 2) I am extremely sentimental. I knew that when it started getting close to the summertime I would have to start going through my inboxes and decide what I wanted to keep and let go of.

Most of it was trash…like the list of partners for the annual beer pong tournament we did with baseball every year or old images for lab reports. Some of it was information I thought that future me might want to hold on to like old scientific journals and workouts (thanks past self!). But the stuff that really got me in my feels were the personal notes: Intimate revelations from the people closest to me, notes of encouragement during hard times, heartfelt apologies, and emails containing creative works that ultimately were little pieces of the sender themselves. I got teary-eyed and may have shed a tear or two going through these things and in that moment I learned a little bit about myself. I love writing (and keeping things written to and for me) because I feel like it provides something tangible to hold onto. Reading these emails I am immediately taken back to specific times in my life and can feel exactly what I was feeling the moment I read the message for the first time. I’ve been scared to lose my email because I no longer will have these tangible forms of memories and I also am forced to really actually finally for real close that chapter of my life. I’m not sure which one of those is causing my fear the most, but I’m noticing that understanding the cause of my emotion is helping me to better come to terms with letting go.

I am constantly on the quest to change and better myself, but for whatever reason, the change that is out of my control is so hard for me. This has been one of the adulting lessons I’ve had to learn over and over since graduating and will probably be something I have to continue working on as I get older. I feel proud for the amount of things I’m leaving behind in my Vassar Email and how this might signify some more growth for me in this area, but as I am typing this, I’m wondering if I subconsciously am looking for a way to further solidify these memories within this post…lol.

I mainly wrote this blog post for myself, but I feel like I should have some sort of take-away message for anyone else who reads it. I can’t really think of anything to say except for never stop writing! I know at times it can be tedious and boring and long but write letters and write notes and write poems and love songs. Not everyone is a hopeless romantic like me, but I think we can all agree that life (especially post-grad life) moves pretty quickly and it could mean so much to you or someone you care about to have the ability to stop and take a minute to get lost in a memory. Take the time to tell people how you feel and to reminisce on the good times and also sometimes the bad times but don’t dwell on anything in the past for too long. I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes: