I’m sitting here in my college house on a Saturday night writing this blog post, which is so crazy to me. It’s about to be my last ever last week of school and I can’t believe that I’m sitting here four years later writing this post.

I’m not even trying to be cliche when I say this, but it really does feel like my first week at Georgetown was not all that long ago. Four years really flew by and yet so much happened in that space of time?! It makes me beyond sad to think that this is the last time that I’ll wake up for class and go through my little routine and walk to campus. It makes me sad that it’s the last few times that I’ll walk through campus on the way to class and bump into a million people I know – those 10 minutes before class are always my favorite when everyone is rushing from one corner of campus to the other and you see so many familiar faces! I’ll miss the annoyingly tiny desks and the crusty carpets in the classrooms, and I’ll even miss the way that I somehow always break a sweat walking up the stairs to class regardless of if it’s the dead of winter or peak summer.

My first week of classes at Georgetown was four years ago and I started school not on campus in Georgetown but in my bedroom in Dubai. To be honest, not that much is different. I have a photo from that very first day of classes (which I am absolutely not putting in this blog post because after being in Covid lockdowns for so long I was definitely not looking my best) but I’m pretty sure I was wearing the same oversized t-shirt that I still wear most days at home. I remember that in my first week of school my go to late night snack was toaster waffles and nutella and that is still my go to night time snack four years later (our overflowing freezer of Trader Joe’s toaster waffles will prove that). Even in my last week of school I am still incapable of being chill with anything to do with class and am still exceedingly extra in all my assignments, so I guess nothing has really changed? I still feel like the same old me which is why it’s so hard to comprehend that so much time has passed!

But I think about that first week and I know that a lot of other less visible things have changed. The biggest of them all has to be the people I have in my life now. I remember timidly reaching out to people on my Zoom classes and striking up awkward online friendships. That first week of school was a strange time because everyone was trying to make friends but we obviously had no deep connections yet. I feel so lucky to be sitting here writing this four years later with so many amazing friends in my life because of my Georgetown experience. Even on a regular Saturday like this one I had such a lovely day in the presence of some of my best friends and it is strange to think back to my life four years ago without them.

I think another one of the biggest changes between that first week and this last week is the mindset that I now have going into my classes and especially as I’m approaching finals. On this blog I talk all the time about building up self-worth beyond academics and I think it’s a really hard thing to do. I still don’t think that I’ve mastered it, but I do really feel like I can walk into my last week of classes feeling like I am smart enough to be here and that I deserve a seat in the classroom which definitely isn’t how I felt in my first week. I may still not think I’m the smartest person in the room (and I most definitely am not) but I feel so much more confident walking into those classrooms knowing what I bring to the table and feeling confident in what I can do. In that first week I felt so frazzled and like I didn’t have anything to bring to class discussions and was at a complete loss as to what I could be adding by being present in those classes.

Lastly, I think as I walk into my last week of classes at Georgetown I can just feel super proud of how I’ve spent every single week of classes over the past four years. I’ve put in so much work into getting this degree and have tried not to take any of my classes for granted, even though, there have definitely been classes where I’ve wanted to be anywhere but there in that moment. I’m so proud of myself that I can say that those classes have all paid off and that I’m now here, almost at the end of that journey.

I never thought that I’d be sad about finally being done with classes, but here I am sitting here in my college house on a Saturday night writing this blog post and feeling just a teensy bit sad.

See you next week,