5 Days to Scotland

 5 Days to Scotland.. and the last of Juniata

Last days living with my friends...

It is May 14th, 2025.
I spent the morning thinking my Jeep battery was dead, and in reality, I hadn't actually put the shifter into park, instead leaving it just over the threshold of being in reverse. I only learned that after my dad spent an hour of his day driving here, after a frustrated series of texts about my jumpstart pack not working. This rookie mistake comes after acing two of my final projects and a 98% on a global climate connections class, with a presumed additional A from Expedition Earth to appear on my transcript. 
So, a 4.0 semester, and yet I can't make sure my Jeep is actually in park. Sorry, Winnie, and sorry, Dad.

My semester is now not only fully over, but I am existing through the last days that I will ever live on campus at Juniata. From a friendless freshman to a severely tuckered-out senior, introverted as ever, and yet as many friends as ever. It's hard to make the most of it when you have to do it back-to-back over a week, as for most of my semester, I was too tired from work, or the activities just didn't match my current lifestyle. I love my friends wholeheartedly, no matter the differences in our lifestyles. I just won't be eagerly joining the senior class bar-hop tonight, as for one, I'm not graduating, and two, I don't drink.

It's additionally difficult to decide what to do as a senior who is not graduating, but this is my last semester. What percent of the activities should I join in on, even if I'm actually planning to walk with next May's seniors at graduation? Will I even actually walk with them? I'm spending time with my friends where I can, but at the back of my mind, I feel like I haven't earned it yet. I have yet to go to Ireland (which I just got my tickets for last night, thank you scholarships & mom for choosing), and finish my last semester there.

When it's over, it's over. The lights are off on a chapter, and yet there is a vast field unfolding before you of potentiality. For me, high school was not the end of all, just a mere stepping stone. It's just one in a series of a couple of graduations to come when your life is aimed at academics and research. How odd it is to once again feel this feeling inching closer, even feeling it now as I realize I will never live at Juniata again (unless they miraculously adopt a Master's program for geology). It has been 4 years since I have felt some semblance of that "what now," that occurred after graduating high school. 

Ever since I returned from New Zealand, I have known this chapter was growing shorter and that summers no longer felt like a break to make money, but perhaps becoming more valuable slots of time. At some point, a switch will flip, and nothing will ever be what it once was. This is not so much a bad thing, but a gradual transition that my brain has been anticipating. Now that my last semester at Juniata is officially over and I have one more abroad semester to go, I have some contemplation before me. 

Scotland thoughts... 

This contemplation leads the way into Scotland, because remnants of this Spring semester won't feel done until I am on that plane back home. Yet, not a single percent of my brain realizes, in excitement, that Scotland is right before me. This also happened with New Zealand, where even after I was there, it didn't quite register for a significant minute. Over the semester, my class, Expedition Earth, wrote a 80+ page field guide (my chapter constituting approx. 30 pages of it) as the cumulative assignment in order to go. I can't wait to hold that print copy in my hands and flick through it while I wait for our boarding call. To see that hefty piece of work before me will do wonders, as I've always dreamt of having some portion of my writing in a printed book. 

Today, I went to Walmart after properly turning my Jeep on, and bought all my miniature toiletries and some extra convenient storage pieces (soap boxes and full-length toothbrush holders!). I always find these little travel purchases so fun, but I'm especially romanticizing the organization of my packed items and always being prepared to smell and feel good even after my long hikes out there in the Scottish Highlands. My brain yearns for something remniscent of the hikes I did in New Zealand with my Earth Evolution and Plate Tectonics Class, as well as to carry a digicam (I forgot to buy a SIM card!!!) and record it in a beautiful, nostalgic frame. 

I just hope that, leading up to this point, my consistent cardio workouts will aid me in hiking, because some of my Field Method classes this semester were quite brutal. I must additionally remember to take a sedimentary field guide book that my one professor gave me (who I'm quite excited to have accompany us on the trip).

More than ever, I'm becoming outdoors-oriented. I want that experience of camping, of being in the mountains during a misty rain, and feeling fulfilled after beautiful hikes through considerable forests. To go beyond where wheeled machines can reach because I can finally endure it myself. This is what I started training for after my first hiking field trip in NZ, because that effectively shifted my wordly perspective. 

And most of all, I finally have the brain capacity to romanticize and daydream about these things that are so close, within reach, and know that it's gradually coming into my life as I visualized it to. Thank you, divinity, for this life as I live it.

To be continued, once I do my best to journal what's before me once I get to Scotland (alongside taking field notes). 





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