As the three-year manager of the Stanford Naked Run, I like to tell people I can do anything as long as everyone in the room is fully clothed. If the relevant parties in a given conflict are 1) covering their important bits and 2) not actively running towards me, it’s practically a lock. 

As you can probably infer, managing the naked run is horrible. I know the human body is a beautiful thing, but when 100 of those beautiful things are running towards you, it is not beautiful. It is very scary, and quite unpleasant. I’m currently concussed from a sock wrestling incident, and even now, my bruised brain can pull up every memory with startling resolution. 

And yet, there is an forthcoming and fully clothed event that chills me: graduation. And by all accounts, that should fall into my safe zone. In under a month, my peers and I will not only put on our finest white (and off-white, let’s be honest) attire but robes on top of that. That’s so many clothes. Ostensibly, I’ll live. 

And yet, every time I picture walking down the graduation stage, I picture myself as a runaway bride. In my vision of the near future, I march down the stage, but just before I reach my diploma, I nosedive off stage and sprint away so quickly that I somehow, through sheer centrifugal force and will, travel back in time. And as I move through the weaker versions of myself, away from all that will soon chain me, there I am: eighteen and a child. Just a baby. I have just joined The Daily.

I still think that there is a nonzero chance that happens next month. 

Because what would the alternative be? That I lose everything that I’ve built in an instant? That the world I’ve built here ceases to exist? That can’t be true. That must be the concussion talking. 

After all, think about what I’d have to leave behind! A celebratory pesto omelette from Hobee’s with Rush, napping on Meyer Green, winning Arbor Trivia, climbing trees with Chris, speaking too loudly during FloMo brunch on a Sunday morning, Corner Yogurt, long and longer nights in the Daily House with people I love, going to Ikea to see about a couch that will not fit in your dorm room, placing down tarot cards on a picnic table after lunch — it’s everything, really. It’s everything, which is ridiculous, because soon, it could all be gone. 

Or — what am I saying? It will be gone. It’ll all be gone. 

I do not think this senior column reads as optimistic, which is interesting, because I do feel optimistic. I really do. I know I will see my friends post-grad. I will continue writing. I will learn how to cook something beyond eggs, and hopefully, that will facilitate my going vegan. I will also one day buy a house, and start a family, and watch my parents retire. I will be so content that the memory of this impending loss will fade. But until then, I know I must be as content as I can now. 

After all, someday, there will be nothing but the forgotten taste of a Coupa smoothie and an empty shoulder where my backpack used to hang. But today, there is sunlight. Even concussed, I cannot keep myself from the sun, and my friends, and the ripple in the universe that seems to only exist here, at Stanford. I walk down the row to my home and pass at least a dozen people I know having dinner on their front lawns. The air smells like jasmine. Erin, Eliza, Greta and I have plans to go to Corner Yogurt, and I am planning on ordering tart yogurt with extra sprinkles. A freshman is blowing bubbles in my direction. And, God I cannot believe it’s ending. But what a gift it’s been, hasn’t it? What a gift, what a gift, what a gift.