End of semester goodbyes

Over the weekend was a farewell party for one of my friends, who was returning to his home country across the globe. He has been a very lively friend--energetic, flamboyantly gay, conversationally sharp, still entertained by his own research after years of detailed work and analysis--and I'm sorry I didn't get to know him better sooner. I wasted half a year of his acquaintance without fully appreciating him.

Part of student life is always saying hello, goodbye, as people come and go. As an undergraduate, this didn't hit me as hard, because I made most of my friends in my classes, and so we were all at the same grade level and would graduate together. But at the graduate level, people take classes at different rates, and in different orders. Very few graduate classes are prerequisites for others, so you can meet anyone at any stage in their education at any time. And because you often work so closely together on the most challenging courses, you grow intimate very quickly, and it feels as if you have been friends for longer than you have. But hello, goodbye, they leave, you leave, and you are both richer people for having known each other.

UAF in particular has been a good place for me, culturally. Most of the other grad students have similar personalities to my own. We are all ambitious enough to be in grad school, but not so high-shooting that we are in Ivy League schools. We are mostly science-oriented, since UAF is a science-oriented school. We are all interested in broadening our horizons and growing as people, since we all took a leap of faith to come to an unusual location, far from our native homes. And most of us are socially (though not necessarily politically) conservative. UAF is not a big party school, and it doesn't have a greek system, so social gatherings tend to be calmer and quieter than most stereotypical college parties.

Also, since the average age at UAF is older than most universities, most of my peers are at a similar stage in life as I am. I no longer have to squirm while listening to stories of other people's drug experimentation or alcohol binges or sexual adventures. These things do not bother me in and of themselves. I don't respect people any less who "indulge." I just think that such things should be kept private, and as people get older and more mature, they learn not to overshare, and people of different lifestyles can get along and enjoy each other's company. It's so darned civil.

As I've said before, I'm so darned thankful not to be twenty-one.