It happened yesterday. On the bus ride back from my team’s first race of the season, down in southern Connecticut, one of my fellow seniors said it: shout-out to the seniors for racing our last Housatonic.
It was my third Head of the Housatonic. Until that shout-out, I hadn’t thought about how it would be my last. I blogged about it my first year, when I was a novice, and last year, when Blue Crew returned from a pandemic hiatus.
Yesterday was sunny and windy, and the leaves along the river were beautiful. Racing into a headwind was a special kind of hard. I enjoyed bus chats with my buddy Alison and devoured the food that Cora’s parents had brought. The schedule worked out so that we got to leave earlier than in past years, so we made it back to campus around 4:00. I had the rest of the day to myself.
So I submitted my Fulbright application! I’d been working on that since June or July, and I’m really proud of how it came out. Clicking the “submit” button was anticlimactic, but at least I can go back to focusing on school.
After that, I went to Tower to have dinner with my friend (and former roommate) Cricket. We forgot that Tower dinner closes at 6:30 on Saturdays, (and yesterday felt like a Friday), so we ventured down Death Hill to Lulu, which, for the first time in my memory, is closed for fall break. We put a dinner together in my dorm kitchenette, complete with leftover cider from Caroline’s birthday, and then watched an episode of Bones like we often did in our first year.
Cricket and I went back to Tower for a teammate’s middle school-themed party, where we passed our phones around to varying degrees of “you look the same!” and “awww! you were so cute!” It was fun, but I was beat, and it was chilly, and my bed seemed like the best place for me, so I left at 9:30 and fell asleep without setting an alarm.
I’ve had the most relaxing Sunday since the semester began. I got up at 7:45 and stayed in bed, reading, then took a lake walk and got lunch with friends. I’m making fall break feel like a break.
Graduation is months away, but now I can’t stop thinking about that shout-out. Every once-a-year event that passes by will be my last.
The view during a lunch behind Stone D