may second
we've reached the end (almost)
As you may have heard or seen or witnessed, the last week has been a chaotic episode on this installment of “what is going on in the world?” The protests on campus (and the cancellation of our main commencement ceremony) give me a feeling of deja vu. Graduating, and being grateful to graduate, but always resigned to an afterthought—congrats on graduating, but there are bigger things going on. I think the class of 2024 (and high school class of 2020) knows all too well that the world does not revolve around them. It’s a lesson we’ve learned time and time again, simultaneously juggling our personal problems with out-of-our-hands problems (pandemics, war, etc).
In these times, it feels selfish to think about graduation and finals (why haven’t they canceled exams?!). Obviously, I know this post might come off as complain-y. While people are risking their reputations, educations, lives for a cause, I’m over here typing in my notes app. Nothing I have to say matters very much, but alas, I write. (This isn’t to sound self-pitying or anything, I’m just trying to be self-aware.)
With that being said, I wanted this post to be an ode to campus.
If I don’t say it enough, I love campus. The brick pathways, the dark library rooms, the red and yellow flowers. People watching in the park, reading on random steps after class, calling my mom from Mount McCarthy. Sometimes I’ll walk around at golden hour, and you would never believe how beautiful campus glows. It has made me so happy to be a student, around other students, and around a university with history seeping out of its architecture.
Did you know I had never (officially) visited campus before accepting admission here? I guess it didn’t matter. When my parents moved to the United States from Central America (my mom from Nicaragua and my dad from El Salvador), they both found new homes in South Central, the neighborhood around USC. My dad recalls to us memories of seeing Olympic soccer games at the Coliseum in 1984, and my mom gushes about her summer high school classes that were held in GFS (where I’ve had a few classes). I could tell you countless stories about hot summer days spent at the California Science Center because it was free, air-conditioned, and child-friendly. Looking through family photo albums, each major life event—weddings, quinceañeras, proms—is documented with a photo shoot at the Exposition Park Rose Garden. There are even pictures of my aunts and uncles, for whatever reason, posed in front of USC entrance signs. My mom and dad’s first date was even at the old University Village’s movie theater. From the second I was accepted, I knew this was my school—there was an invisible string tying me to USC, if you will.
Originally, I wanted to document all of my favorite spots for this post: the Adirondack chairs by the music school, the library courtyard, the steps across Founder’s Park. But I’m honestly too busy right now. Anyways, I saw this quote on TikTok the other day and it got me thinking:
You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place. Like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again.
There is one more week until graduation and I have an acute sense of awareness that nothing will be this way ever again, that every time I walk into a building may be the last time I am ever there again. I think this awareness has been heightened by the protests; watching your safe space turn violent has forced me to grieve the campus I once knew before I have even left. Admittedly, I am angry that I could not have a “normal” graduating experience. The privilege to grieve feels like it’s been taken away because, again, there are more important things going on.
In sophomore year, campus was littered with COVID testing sights and outdoor study spaces. Now, campus is lined with fences, parks are taken over by tents, and quads have been reserved for graduation. I’m looking forward to my last walk down Trousdale to properly say goodbye, hopefully finding proper closure amid all of these changes.
— em
emily’s favorites rn:
the second half of TTPD
the cappuccino my professor made for me at 11:30am (long story, but it was so good I’m still thinking about it)
the fact that this is my current spotify daylist…is this play about us?
