I AM OLD.

I know a major theme of this blog and thus my life recently has been my fear of the future, but this past weekend, I think it realized its full potential.

I went back home to NJ for the wedding of my cousin Shannon and her boyfriend now husband! Mike. It was a BEAUTIFUL ceremony, everyone looked so genuinely happy and love was undeniably there. The wedding was of course fun and I had a good time, but given my new 21-year-old status (the bartender carded me, although it was an open bar..? leave it to NJ), my singleness and the fact that I was only home for the weekend because I had to start my classes for senior year today all made me realize just how old I really do feel.

I got back to Tucson last night and hung out with my roommates and my friends. It was fun too to just hang out, but today was the first day back at school. While I only had one class, Women in Literature, I just knew that the liberty and ease of the summer in Tucson is completely gone now. Since being in Tucson for the majority of the summer, it came as a shock to me to see all of the thousands of people on campus when I was. Everything is crowded, everyone is excited, there's that feeling. All my bars and cafes are crowded, the return of greek life and that annoying BS is undeniable and the bookstore is a madhouse. It's nuts to see how much this town changes with the population and re-population of the college, but my newfound love for Tucson I hope is here to stay, regardless.I noticed a lot of younger people, felt like I owned the place a little bit and realized that this really is the beginning of the end.

In my class, we had to write about an "apprentenceship," basically, something we were stressing about in starting something new in life. I had a few different things to write about, but since it was only a paragraph and I had to think quickly, I generalized and said that my apprentenceship is facing the threat of failure. For the first time ever, I really might fail. In the short-term, this can mean not completing my thesis or not graduating on time, although that seems safely far-fetched to me. In the long-term, it means not being able to find a job after graduation, no prospects in that regard and having to settle for either something I don't want to do for the short-term or attempting to go abroad again to teach English. I have been thinking of this a lot lately - graduation is ever-looming, and this threat of failure is so scary to me because this is the first time it's really real. I have been in school my whole life; that's what I know, what I'm good at. I always have had to only focus on what's next in terms of school. BUT, now I don't want to go to grad school, I'm almost through the system and need to depend on the skills I have somehow accumulated. I am not too entirely scared because I am no stranger to challenges and have proven to myself on a few different occasions that I can pretty much conquer anything I put my mind to and that standard rules don't always apply, so that is somewhat comforting, but again, this failure is now a legitimate consequence, and it will affect me much more than getting a bad grade or not getting a class I want.

Anyway, I hope you all are doing well and I do apologize for the lack of updates. I am afraid it might continue though- I am starting my internship soon and also applied for a night job, we'll see what happens! Oh, and I didn't get the newspaper. Alas...the beat goes on.