Bittersweet. The only way to describe my feelings about my last day tomorrow.
Six years ago I left my family and friends in Birmingham, Alabama to attend UT. I knew it would be a hard transition but I had always wanted to follow in my dad's footsteps and go to UT and I was determined to make it happen.
Here I am standing outside of Presidential Court after my parents moved me in. Giving my mom the classic please hurry and take my picture this is embarrassing look.
Little did I know 20 minutes later I would be crying, begging them not to leave me at this school!
Well as you might expect they left me, and I sat there awaiting my first day of recruitment the next morning.
My potluck roomate never showed up so I was flying solo the first several weeks at school. When I started recruitment I didn't know much about sororities (which seems sort of comical now), but I loved to talk so I found myself loving recruitment from the start.
Here is me with my gamma chi on Preference Night
Waiting to get my bid outside Panhellenic on Bid Day
I received a bid to AOII my first choice, so I was a happy camper on Bid Day!
Things were really starting to go my way...
Looking through my keepsake box (I hang on to just about anything I can) I found the letter I wrote to myself at our new member retreat (which was actually returned to my as a senior)
In part of my letter I wrote,
"By my senior year when I read this I want four things to be true: 1. To have best friends that I will keep forever. 2. To not regret or feel like I have missed out on anything during college. 3. To build an amazing life in Knoxville but never lose touch with my friends from home. 4. Always stay true to myself."
Cheesy. Yes I know...but nonetheless I think wise words coming from a younger, less mature version of myself. Less than a month into my freshman year I think I had it pegged what I wanted out of college.
The next four years did not dissapoint.
In put it well in my Miss Homecoming statement, "four years later and I am speechless. Trying to put my feelings into words about this university and all it has given me is a feat I cannot accomplish in 250 words. Everything I hoped for in my college years has come true because of my decision to attend UT."
The best years of my life so far have been spent at UT.
#1 I met my husband. That is always my number one. I met Brett in Fall of 2005 at Torchnight, another historic UT tradition. FIJI was escorting AOII and I was the lucky girl who got a rose from Brett. Right outside on the front steps of the Panhellenic building to be exact. I literally walk by the spot where I met my husband everyday!
#2 I met my best friends EVER. I am not lying when I stand up and talk to parents and students about sororities giving you lifelong friends, it sounds cheesy but it is beyond true.
Me and two of my bridesmaids Kalee and Amy waiting to be initiated into AOII
Bid Day my senior year
Not only do you share college memories with your sisters, you share all the memorable moments that follow
#3 I graduated from UT TWICE. Enough said.
First time around
Second time around
#4 My very first adult job was working as the Panhellenic Affairs Advisor at UT
Talk about my dream job, working with amazing sorority women everyday!
I got to be a part of the groundbreaking ceremony for Morgan Hill Sorority Village, a project so long in the making!
Talk about a blast from the past...I thought this would give my students a good laugh!
UT has given me (well I have earned it too!) a bachelors degree, a masters degree, and my very first job. But it has given me so much more than whats on paper
And tomorrow, I have to leave. My first job just happened to be my dream job, so it is hard to have to leave after only one year. But I know everything happens for a reason and I keep reminding myself that their is something great right around the corner.
But I am not sure it will make it any easier to leave tomorrow. I keep asking myself what is making it so hard to leave and I think I understand
Tonight when I was packing up my things in the office I walked out into the atrium, the whole building eerily quiet, and all I can think is this is where it all started.
I know its crazy but I can envision running up through those doors on bid day like it was yesterday. And for the past five years I have watched so many girls just like me run through those doors so excited for the experience that awaits them.
I work with such amazing students everyday and I get to be a part of their experience with them, and in a way it makes me feel like I have never left.
So I know after tomorrow I have to leave and in a way let it all go. I will still have the memories but it will no longer be part of my day to day life.
Its a little scary to be honest. If you think about it, I have barely had a change of scenery in the past six years. So leaving UT and Panhellenic tomorrow will be leaving the shelter and comfort of whats familiar and taking a leap into the unknown.
Not knowing where Brett and I will be or what we will be doing a year from now is sort of alarming, but at the same time sort of liberating.
Tomorrow may be the end of a chapter and the end of my time at my Alma Mater, but it is also the beginning of something new.
