Usually, I kick off each month with a geeky reference to the month’s theme. This time, I’d like to do something different.
The members of our staff — and probably most of our readers — are in a very transitional stage of life. We range in age from early to late twenties, and out of our twenty-odd years, we’ve spent almost all of that time in school.
In two years and five months of Girls in Capes, we’ve had fifteen staff members — some of whom have graduated to new opportunities — and of those staff members, more than half have had their own graduations. Many of us will graduate by the end of 2015. Girls in Capes started after my first semester in graduate school. Some of our staff members and guest writers, including our current Young Adult Reviewer, are people I’ve met in graduate school. Next week, I’ll graduate.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling the melancholy that comes along with the end of something like graduate school. I spent most of the past three years learning to run this website. I grew very close to a group of amazing women. I met and learned from mentors I didn’t even know I was looking for. And a few days ago, I was struck by the horrible sensation that everything good around me was coming to an end.
But I felt the same way when I graduated from high school.
I planned to live on campus when I started college the following year, where very few of my friends would attend. From my sophomore to senior years of high school, a lot of my time socializing was spent with my sister — who was an academic year below me, was part of my friend group, and whom I’ve mentioned that I’ve always been very close to — and I knew the amount of time we could spend together would cut down dramatically. And then, just a few weeks after I graduated, my grandfather, whom I was also very close to, passed away.
At that time, I wasn’t quite eighteen years old. I thought the world was ending. I felt disconnected from my family and as if I’d lost my friends.
It turned out that although everything around me felt like it was ending, a host of new beginnings were a few months down the road. I spent only three years as an undergrad, but I held four different jobs, participated in several clubs, and was even on leadership of one club for two out of the four years. If there was an opportunity to learn or try something new, I took it, and made some amazing friends along the way.
Even now, I’m excited to explore what happens next even despite how sad I am that things are ending. In some ways, there are things you can’t do if you keep clinging to the things you did in the past. You can put those things on a shelf, dust them off once in a while, or even hang them on a wall to remind you to keep moving forward, or even why you want to keep moving forward.
As long as you recognize that you’re reached the end. And as long as you remember your next beginning is in front of you.
And so, this month, we’ll talk about endings — but we’ll also talk about beginnings.
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Feliza Casano just has a lot of feelings. She edits and writes for all sections of the site, and she’s the one behind GiC’s Facebook and Twitter. Follow her on Twitter @FelizaCasano.
