Last week, I had my registration appointment for next semester’s classes.
Yesterday, I got an email notification about the graduation application period opening.
Today, I got the confirmation.
It’s jarring to go from the excitement of becoming a new inbound student at San Diego State University in January and find myself staring down the finality of this University student life only 11 months later. Having such a very short window in which to get to know more people and form that alma mater connection makes this current goal of lining up graduation with my upcoming milestone birthday year bittersweet.
In a more ideal timeline, I would have taken semesters 12 units at a time, a two-year University experience with more bandwidth to engage in extracurricular activities and relationship building. Instead, extistential pressures and economic reality drove me to pursue efficiency, this current timeline where I’ll be having graduation commencement cermonies back-to-back: 2025 from City College as a Fall 2024 graduate and 2026 from SDSU.
It’s been an exhausting endeavor, a near-monastic state of being with such a high opportunity cost that I exist only as a scholar and a walker to my dog. I’ve done very poorly at maintain other areas of my life in balance, from my fitness workouts to my journaling/blogging.
However, there’s still much left to do at SDSU before it’s truly done, including the coming end—and related final exams—of the current Fall semester.