Nineteen days and counting. . .

. . . Nineteen days until I walk across the podium and pray to God they let me take that holder home with a real diploma. Only a few more papers stand between me and post graduate life. I do not yet know if that will include graduate school, credentialing, mountaineering in Tibet, or starting up that community house and getting involved in local developments.

I’m leaving the structure that I have intrinsically fought and secretly loved for the last four years, and I cannot seem to feel anything mediocre about this ultimate separation. The emotions are strong in both directions. When I have to defend myself for reading Darwin against ridiculous attacks by the illiterate, or fend off the chauvinistic degradations of young boys that are in a sad disillusioned state and assume they are men, I leap for joy at the thought of leaving this ultra-conservative Christian bubble.

And then I jump onto Karissa’s bed and tell her about getting in trouble for talking in the library, but that the talking was an hour long conversation with a guy and a math prof. that gave me hope for people in general (even if I couldn’t construct a full and worthwhile thought of my own, it was great to hear others actually carry a conversation! AND it was about things I WANT to learn about after I leave. I LEARNED, it was grand). She laughs at my jokes and tells me about her day. I interrupted her scripture reading and then got to read it to her–hey man, I wasn’t going to interrupt her and Jesus and then assume it’d be OK, I had to make sure those two talked at least through the Bible. I don’t want a millstone around my neck, no sir.

Ambivalence is rough.

P.S. The cross-country ride for clean water wells in Africa starts in six weeks. It’s a good stresser, but an added stresser none-the-least.