Spring is a time for new things: new life, new beginnings, new growth. New things seldom occur without change and this spring has brought with it a great many changes for me.
Two days after Christmas, my eight year old cousin died suddenly after a fall at home. It was devastating to our whole family and I found myself quite existentially unsettled. How can we live with death? It was a hard start to the year.
In January, I began my first semester as an unconventional student. I began a second job assisting with workers’ compensation cases at a law firm. I was taking one class in person at a local community college, rather than my university. I got a taste of what life is like when you are not a college student.
In March, I got married. It was lovely. We moved into a new townhouse. It is also lovely.
Also in March, I started in on three eight-week online classes. I do not enjoy online classes, I never have, but it was what made the most sense for my schedule. There was one class that I consider a positive class and one class that routinely frustrated me into quite a few angry showers.
In April, we went on our honeymoon to Mexico.
In May, I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude—along with my younger sister and brother-in-law and my youngest sister who graduated from high school.
It has been a big five months.
While I already miss college and being surrounded by people who care a lot about the things I care about and are smarter and more knowledgeable than I am, it will be nice to be able to slow down a little bit.
I clean my house a lot. I have time to bake homemade bread. I am refining my pour-over coffee process and got the first hints of sweetness in a cup just last week. I’m designing a desk that I will build with my brother-in-law as a place to continue to foster the brainy and academic parts of myself and as a place where I will try to corral myself into an area of academic interest of appropriate scope for a master’s degree. It should be fun.
Lindsey Grundyson 