you're right...it's been forever. well, or a few days. it just seems like forever.

senior speak-off today, and i commented to claire at some point how these "beginning of the end" events are a little frightening. what were we doing, after all, but beginning to rehearse for commencement? auditions for graduation speakers ask us to be clear about the fact that we are -- hell, to envision the act of -- graduating. and while i'm not exactly fighting my way back into the womb [ah, the womb that is swarthmore...nice and cozy and insulated and once you're out you're not going back...just one of a whole host of slightly tortured metaphors i heard today], it's still, somehow, a bit worrisome to think of being Done.

at some point...January, i think...i wrote here about how, as we get older, more and more things about our lives begin to be irrevocable, or at least practically so. this is one of them: i can't any more decide that i don't want to be a social scientist. i'm not going to wake up and decide that no, i really should have been pre-med. there are no take-backs on an investment of four years and immeasurable exhilaration, stress, worry and developmental turmoil. i don't have the will or the hundred and thirty grand to do this again...which is fine, as it turns out. mostly, i've done the things i wanted to do here.

there's just always going to be a part of me that wonders how the whole course of my life would be different if i had stayed a math major.

in related news, i still don't have a job. hmmph.