This year's changes are apt to bring with them a hearty helping of nostalgia, I have already come to expect it. This past weekend was my last 'school weekend', i.e. one spent lamenting the people 'going out' while I readjust the elastic waist of my sweat pants and position myself for the next hours of essay typing. The reward for dedication to a lame Saturday night is the relief of having completed one of my final essays of my undergraduate degree.

This morning was my last journalism class-ever. This particular course was an awful year-long class that brought my graduating class together with a shared disdain, proving misery loves company. Yet, at the final moment, I saw it as a pinnacle- one of the concluding events in an education I have been pursuing since discovering the alphabet in pre-school at age three. When I look at it that way, it's a bit overwhelming. To think that 19 school years in the making was finished.

I have my very last class in organized crime law tomorrow evening, and that's it. No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks. The end. Not just the end for summer where I can be carefree in my devotion to suntans, non-school reading and water sports. This time, I will not have the security of forced learning come next fall to ensure I am making proper use of my skills and abilities. The use of said skills will be reliant upon self-initiated endeavours. That is perhaps scariest of all the realizations I've made of late.

Lots of scary things happen, admittedly, to one in his or hers twenties. I have been frightened by the realization of how much groceries cost, the admittance that I in fact do not know it all, the inability to wear some of my teenager clothes, the stubborn pride of not moving back home even if it makes financial sense, acknowledging that sometimes decisions needs to be made based upon what makes the most financial sense, and the brown envelop I get in the mail every 90days which expresses that hell hath no fury like a Hydro bill.

One step forward, one foot in front of the other, as I escape mandatory essays and attendance in lecture halls, and onto a world where more of my life's direction is up to me.