Spring sure seems to be on the way. But I’ve been wrong before, especially this winter. I am optimistically looking at my garden as I walk the dog, hoping to find little green shoots of anything popping up among the debris of winter. So far <nil/>. But a friend of mine, who keeps a small garden near an elementary school says she has green nubs showing up there against the sun heated school wall, so there is hope!

Spring this year means more to me than some other years, as it marks the end of this academic adventure. Thirty-four more days to worry about papers and presentations and of course the web design class. Today as I ate some supper at an AA restaurant I reflected on why I feel so nostalgic at the realization that it’s all going to come to an end. For one, I had a really good time being a student, and I learned some interesting stuff to boot. And for sure I feel somewhat sad at leaving because I have made some good friends here. But one thing I know is that good friends stay good friends even when school ends. Some of my very best friends are from my undergraduate days more than 30 years ago.

Probably more than a touch of the nostalgia comes from a perception that I will lose another connection with my parents who both went to school here. It’s not as if I can picture them here, as a typical kid I can only imagine them as my parents and never as young single students; but I do see buildings and think that they walked by the same places I walk, climbed the same stairs, looked across the same Diag. It’s been a comforting connection during these past two years, a way to think about them every day, and I will miss that nudge from them daily as I ride past the house dad grew up in on my bus trip in, walk past the bell tower that Mom had classes in, climb the stairs of West Hall where dad studied engineering. But I think it’s a good time to let that go now, another way to move on. They would be happy that I was here, finally a MICHIGAN student, and they would be just as happy to see me move on and start my second career. The connection doesn’t really end, it just adjusts. Being the parents that they were, they’re nudging me out the door now, on to whatever comes next.