finals and endings

I feel like I broke something, like the fact that I didn't write a post during finals week about how stressed I was over finals or something similar broke a pattern that I sort of started for the past two semesters.

But, you know, things have to happen at least three times to no longer be a coincidence.

And for some reason this finals week managed to be the finals week I was so busy I didn't even have time to complain about how busy I was, just a barely coherent blog post last Tuesday written in the dead of night because reasons.

Which seemed odd, because I only took two classes this block, which compared to the regular five or so classes I take during a normal semester that's not awkwardly split in half, should have been a lot easier.

But more than likely due to my fabulous procrastinating skills, I ended having a super intense finals week, which wasn't horrible... it just was slightly overwhelming and I never want to do it again. (Because I'll never ever do it again hahahahahha nope)

But my last day of classes/finals was yesterday. Just a quick little test for my crisis management class and a quick little presentation on my costume for my costuming class. And while that was going on, I was thinking about how anticlimactic semester/block endings really are.

You spend your whole semester just waiting for the moment when you no longer have to go to class and then several weeks later you're done and you hand your teacher your final but you finished early before most of the people in your class and the silence is thick and deafening and you just kind of look at each other and then you awkwardly grab your stuff and leave and that's the end.

No goodbyes. No "thanks for being such an awesome teacher this semester i really liked this class". No witty reparteé (sp?) with classmates and maybe also your professor. No emotional hugs. Just... leaving.

And I get that most of this is because it's college and it's not high school and there's a good chance that you will either see that teacher again (or even have them again if they teach enough major classes) (you know who you are) and then you guys can talk and hang out and all the jazz, and the same goes for most of the students, it's not high school and this is not the only place where you're required to see each other.

But still. It feels kinda empty. Sometimes you won't have a teacher again. Sometimes your class partner is flying out to Utah right after the semester and you find out you didn't have a chance to say goodbye.

And the reason that these endings, I think, feel so wrong and awkward is because there is no chance to say goodbye, even if we know that goodbye is only going to be for a week or so or however long it is until the next semester starts. There is no chance to actually come to terms with the fact that what has become habitual for the past couple months is now ended. There's no formal transition. It just is.

And it feels really weird.