When finals week gives you hell...just graduate.

Start spreading the news, because I've finally finished my Bachelor's. Needless to say, I am at a loss as to what to do with my life. Is this what adults do? Wonder about what they're going to do with their lives?

The infamous jump drive.

My finals week was going swimmingly until Wednesday. I had one final left, which meant that all I needed to do was finish my capstone paper so that I could give my presentation. I had finished a solid draft of my paper the week before. A fifteen-page gem derived from the works of Ben Jonson. Something I had been steadily working on for most of my semester. But alas, fate was against me on 12/12/12. I arrived at work and plugged my jump drive into the computer. I couldn't open my paper. I couldn't open my paper on Teresa's computer. The computer support guys couldn't open my paper. Then my jump drive physically fell apart. My paper was gone. My fifteen-page paper for my senior capstone and my graduate school application.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

The computer guys whisked my jump drive off to the emergency room while I coped with a mild case of hysteria. I fashioned an outline out of my semester's research and slapped them around bits of my paper that had been saved in hard copy form. I then proceeded to write an almost entirely new fifteen-page paper in fourteen hours by drinking a minimal amount of water and only taking breaks to use bathroom (which occurred much less than I'm sure was healthy). By the time I trudged home after midnight, I was quite delirious.

The next day, I gave my presentation (which couldn't have gone better, thank you for asking) and then I rushed off to finish the last edits on my blessed paper (I had saved it in many locations). At 5:00pm, I dropped my little masterpiece into my professor's box and walked away. I got into the elevator, faced the English literature department one last time and took a bow.

I don't know what the deeper meaning is behind my jump drive falling apart, but I know that it needed to happen. To prove BYU? To prove my professors? To prove myself? But it's all finished now. I took my last tests and wrote my final papers and had to walk away. I've had to throw away the jump drive that I've had since my first semester of college. I suppose it just means that it's time for something new. A new jump drive on which to save new projects and new memories.

I guess that's how it is. Things fall apart. Things end. We reconstruct ourselves from the scraps of our past and the new bits that have come to us over time. But for now I feel that I'll revel in my scraps for just a little while longer.

In small proportions we just beauties see;

And in short measures, life may perfect be. 

-Ben Jonson