Saturday, May 20, 2006
i felt numb during commencement, probably because i was doing it for my parents who'd want to see their son wear a gown, and probably because a few thousand were walking together in a conveyor belt : undergraduates in here ---> congratulations! *takes diploma cover* pose for de riguer photograph, get out, smile, pose somemore. graduation! - maybe Chekhov would have something to say about this.... lifeless procedure. It was so impersonal that those who came to see their offspring were marooned further up in the stadium- not that I cared. all the honor cords and stoles (and not to be a show off, but i was particularly bedecked with those things.. okay okay okay. i'm a showoff) didn't mean a thing to me.
the sense of loss only hit me during my final lunch with the lab. granted, i haven't exactly be mr social in all the three years there, or even in my three years in wisc, but to be leaving the place where my science and my thinking was shaped didn't feel very good. it might be rather shitty sometimes to work in such a demanding lab, but by the very fact that i was in a place where i actually belonged and didn't stick out socially like a sore thumb (well, if the conversation topics got meaningless, there was at least the tissue culture room where it was too noisy to talk and Bach was blasting above the hum of the fume hoods) perhaps, was the salve for the intense loneliness i've experienced in my three years in madison.
i've grown attached to quite a few people in madison, but people will come and go, and i'm confident we'd meet again, in new york city, in singapore, in san francisco, or whereever they are, but even more so, i've grown attached to the things and places in madison, and they hold more meaning for me than empty rituals. so its goodbye McArdle and the Union Terrace; the tree lined walks of University Avenue with the smell of flowers in the air, and ugly Humanities, the building that everyone wants to blow up but in there I learnt the most out of life and Chemistry, where the hottest TAs whom i'd always have brief crushes on reside. i promise i will visit you all sometime. there's a direct flight from la guardia to madison.. so probably, if i find time. :D
but i'd be gone in two days time. goodbye madison. i love you.
now i'm all alone again. *sigh*
the sense of loss only hit me during my final lunch with the lab. granted, i haven't exactly be mr social in all the three years there, or even in my three years in wisc, but to be leaving the place where my science and my thinking was shaped didn't feel very good. it might be rather shitty sometimes to work in such a demanding lab, but by the very fact that i was in a place where i actually belonged and didn't stick out socially like a sore thumb (well, if the conversation topics got meaningless, there was at least the tissue culture room where it was too noisy to talk and Bach was blasting above the hum of the fume hoods) perhaps, was the salve for the intense loneliness i've experienced in my three years in madison.
i've grown attached to quite a few people in madison, but people will come and go, and i'm confident we'd meet again, in new york city, in singapore, in san francisco, or whereever they are, but even more so, i've grown attached to the things and places in madison, and they hold more meaning for me than empty rituals. so its goodbye McArdle and the Union Terrace; the tree lined walks of University Avenue with the smell of flowers in the air, and ugly Humanities, the building that everyone wants to blow up but in there I learnt the most out of life and Chemistry, where the hottest TAs whom i'd always have brief crushes on reside. i promise i will visit you all sometime. there's a direct flight from la guardia to madison.. so probably, if i find time. :D
but i'd be gone in two days time. goodbye madison. i love you.
now i'm all alone again. *sigh*
