I am sitting on the second floor of the library, sipping on the dregs of a vanilla latte and procrastinating my final paper for Dr. Bellinger’s Communication and Technology class. It is dreary outside. There is a whisper of rain in the wind.

In less than two weeks, I will graduate from Seattle Pacific University and finally earn that precious degree I’ve worked four years to get. I will have my entire life ahead of me.

I want to have something poetic to say about the past four years, to be able to sum up my experience in a tidy 700-word article that makes everyone think I am content and thankful and satisfied.

About a month ago, I told our perspectives editor I would write this piece with the expectation that a burst of nostalgia would hit me at any moment. I hoped by the time it came to actually write the thing, I would be looking back on my SPU experience with bittersweet tears in my eyes, ready to wax poetic about sunny days in Tiffany Loop and late nights by the canal. But there is nothing there. I am just tired.

When I moved into my Hill Hall dorm room in September 2020, I swear I was someone else entirely. I was blond. I was bubbly. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Now, I am dejected and bitter and more mean than I want to be.

I don’t want to deny that many beautiful and life-changing things have happened to me in the past four years.

I met a kindred spirit in my freshman year roommate (now we live together in a little white house). I shaved my head in an Emerson dorm room. I hosted a radio show and spent every Monday morning for a year in the KSPU studio. I wrote a lot — poems and short stories and love letters and Falcon articles and a senior honors thesis. I learned who I am and who I want to become. But all the joy I felt in these moments was in spite of SPU, not because of it.

Being a student at this university is exhausting. It is awful to see my favorite professors leave, to be embarrassed of my school’s reputation and to see student resources disappear before my eyes. Being a student leader only accelerates burnout. It is indescribably draining to be the one meant to keep those around you motivated and excited, yet you yourself can barely stand to care.

I want to have something poetic to say about it all, but what I really feel like doing is screaming. I want to scream at the board of trustees for denying my humanity and the humanity of so many that I love. I want to scream at upper administration, who couldn’t care less about listening to the needs and wants of their students.

I want to scream at myself — the version of me who moved into Hill Hall in September 2020. I am so jealous of her ignorance.