One More Year

Four final papers, seven hours of packing/cleaning, a bag of Tate's cookies and one red-eye flight later, I am finally back home, albeit in a sleep-deprived daze of post-shoving-my-life-into-boxes-at-the-end-of-the-year-for-the-seventh-year-in-a-row exhaustion and I-can't-believe-the-year-is-already-over incredulity.

Which is good, in a way, because the reality of parting ways with graduating seniors is starting to kick in—I'm going to miss them more than it would be entirely appropriate to admit in public/cyberspace.

I know there's some feel-good wisdom out there about how farewells are necessary before you can meet again, but my current sentiment is captured by the following Charles Schulz quote:

"Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes."

But just to make myself feel a little better:

"No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth."  - Robert Southey