Column: The last week

I spent the night before my final first day of class reading the handful of postcards my dad sent me before we moved to North Carolina. One featured the Charlotte skyline. Another proclaimed it to be “The Tar Heel State,” complete with little footprints Dad labeled to belong to each member of my family.

“I think you will like it here. It’s pretty. Cows and horses.”

He might have slightly overestimated my enthusiasm for livestock.

But for the record, Dad, I do like it here.

This year has been an experiment in fitting as much of UNC and North Carolina into my memory as I possibly could: I half-heartedly attempted to climb nearly every mountain or glorified hill in the Triangle area. I mapped every song I could find referencing North Carolina. I took a poetry class. I went to a bug festival in the state capital. I saw as much student theater as I could cram into my schedule. I watched UNC win a national championship title. I kept succulents alive.

And now I’m less than one week away from my last ever last day of class, and I’m trying to find some way to wrap up my life at UNC. Just like I’m trying to find some way to neatly wrap up this column. And you know what, I don’t think I can do either.

I’m going to leave UNC with things undone. I’m going to leave UNC and wish I’d done a dozen things just one more time. I’m going to think about ideas left unpenned and columns left unwritten.

But I’m also probably going to sleep a lot more, so that’s nice.

I live in quiet contentment that every other graduating senior must be plagued by similar concerns that they’ve left too much undone in North Carolina. But that’s OK: We can’t all do everything.

If we could, there would have been a lot more of you in my bathroom this morning as I stood on a sink to catch and release a spider the size of a Blue Cup living above my shower. Some (spider-related) experiences are better left unhad.

Every time I think I’m properly adjusting to my impending departure from UNC, I find myself sitting in the arboretum crying to Petey Pablo’s “Raise Up.”

I woke up at 3 a.m. the other night in a panic that my class friends didn’t know how much I cherished them (the answer is Very Much).

I’m beginning to realize that the stress dreams about sleeping through class registration will probably never stop.

I don’t think I can wrap up my time in North Carolina and my column in one succinct witticism or a playlist of songs about the state. But I can try.

In less than two months, I move to Virginia. I say goodbye for now to Carolina Blue street signs and the state bird being the cardinal, and then I say hello to Colonial Williamsburg and the state bird still being the cardinal.

I don’t have anyone sending me postcards lauding the beauty and grace of the cows and horses in Virginia, but I’ll take my chances.