The Only Class I've Ever Regretted Skipping

Things I heard in class:

• People cannot accept unanswered truth
• Truth and myth are one and the same
• The beginning feels like forever ago while the end feels like forever away
• 'The forgotten land of the past'
• You always find yourself back home
• Each time a story spirals through a lifetime, it gathers momentum
• We calculate the best person we can be, and we calculate the worst person we can be
• We are saturated with our own stories
• If you can't have fun with words, why did we work so hard to learn our language?
• Initiation has taken until the end of this class; our entire semester was initiation
• The journey never ends
• Bob Dylan rocks
• Skepticism is a necessity growing up
• Emotional sparagmos
• "Depression had raped me of all my purpose"
• Life is immersed in a pool of suffering
• July 25th is a scarily precedented date
• Chaos is a type of order we haven't discovered yet
• Myths always start on days like these
• Separation is either escape or exile
• Our initiation may be our only time to enjoy our experiences
• Telling stories is the most important thing we can do
• People demand explanations, even when there isn't one
• "All kinds of kinds"
• It all comes down to who you spend your time with
• Don't ask for the moral of the story, ask for the actual story
• No separation between the whole story and the moral, they are one and the same
• We are 'insignificant"
• We are the family.
• Just tell the story.
• The answer to all of our questions, the ones that haunt us at night, the ones that keep us up, the ones that refuse to leave us alone- the answer in the story.

I cannot believe that today was our last day of class. As the speeches winded down, I found myself getting sad that there were fewer and fewer left, because those stories were the last of the initiation stage and now we're arriving at the end. As Michelle said, we all say we aren't scared of death because it hasn't approached us, but as I was leaving class today, I felt the reaper breathing on my shoulder, whispering into my ear that I had reached the end. I have loved this class so much more than I can express on a blogpost online, because you can't hear my tone of voice and can't see my face as I type this, but rest assured that this is a bittersweet moment. I have adored and appreciated the people that make up this class and this family, and have learned more about each of you than I would had we been in a Calculus or Chemistry class together, because this class allowed to us to know ourselves and each other. For some of us, the friendships have traveled outside of the four walls of Wilson 1-122, and for that I could not be more grateful. And for those that I have only had the pleasure of interacting with twice a week for 75 minutes, know that I have enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy, getting to know you even if only through rereading your blog posts years down the road.