I finally got to go on a little vacation (ten days is too short, trust me.)
You're shaking your head at me??? Well, take a minute to ponder upon the crazy transfers I had to make in 24 hours (Lagos-London-New York- DC)....and my 2am arrival in my DC hotel, trust me, it was a VERY short vacation.
I love NY. I really do. BUT I realized that I hadn't been back to my college city since the year after I graduated So I took a little trip down to DC.
And I realized just how much I had missed the serenity of the DMV area. New York is Lagos, DC is Abuja. Just seems mad Chiiiilllllllll. And it's as though EVERYBODY works for government in one way or the other.
On arrival, I was reminded of how much I had loved it in DC. The amazing classes we got to take, the trips to the Library of Congress, the shutdowns of my campus during IMF/World Bank meetings.......*sigh*. Fantastic college experience, I tell you.
My university has an interesting graduation tradition. Each graduate is given a commemorative brick - with your name, your degree type and year of graduation - that is placed somewhere on campus. It isn't mandatory but I remembered that I had opted to have that.(thank God I did because I have no official graduation pictures as I forgot to order them)
As I hadn't visited my campus in so long, I had no idea where the bricks for my graduation year(and semester) had been laid. I decided to go searching - after a trip to the bookstore to stock up on alumni memorabilia - after all, how hard could it possibly be? Imagine lugging shopping bags around campus, looking intensely at the bricks on the floor, searching for a sign of your year, or your name. Not easy at all.
After walking across campus for about 20 minutes, and having worked up quite an unattractive sweat in the process, I decided to get help. So I called a friend of mine who graduated a semester after I did, and she described where they'd laid down the bricks for our year. With renewed energy, I lugged myself and my shopping bags back across campus to the spot she had described, and voila! there it was - My Name, I was so happy I almost cried.
I figured my trip back on campus wouldn't be complete without partaking of happy hour at our all-time favorite hang-out spot, where I proceeded to spend three hours at the bar being pulled into all sorts of conversation (that's a whooooole different blog post altogether)
In all, so many things had changed, yet so many things had remained the same. I was ( and still am) so proud, so happy, so grateful that I had been afforded the luxury of attending college where I did.
Going back made me realize how much I have changed, how much I have settled into where I live now, the job I have and the general peculiarities of the life here.
Walking round campus made me miss certain aspects of my college days but I couldn't stop thinking about how much I missed my car, and the Friday Night Brandy/Cognac/Whiskey sessions my colleagues and I sometimes have, my hair/spa/dry-cleaners routine.....even the lack of electricity sometimes.
I realized that the three and a half years I spent in college molded my mind, molded my thought process as I entered the world as a fresh graduate. However, the experiences of the last five years have molded me into the somewhat responsible adult woman I am today.
Sometimes I regret the choice I made to move. Sometimes I wonder what would have been different. Would I have met some of the crazy assholes who ....(let me just leave it there)? Probably not. But I wouldn't also have met some of the best friends I have. I know I wouldn't be HALF as confident as I am as well (because this city demands that you are tough as nails or you will be spat out...on the regular)
So here I am, just like my beloved Buff and Blue GWU, five years down the line and a lot of things have remained the same.....but quite a lot of things have changed.
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