My e-mail inbox was vis­ited last week by a mes­sage from the University remind­ing me that the Graduation Fair was fast approach­ing; as a senior grad­u­at­ing in May of this year, that’s a bit daunting.

 I know the day is com­ing when I’ll make the tran­si­tion from a cur­rently enrolled stu­dent to an alum­nus, but sud­denly the need to pur­chase a cap and gown, dis­trib­ute tick­ets to fam­ily mem­bers, think about financ­ing accu­mu­lated col­lege debt and the ever present need to get a job feel much more urgent than they did a week ago.

 By no means am I hav­ing a panic attack or get­ting anx­ious about the com­ple­tion of this chap­ter in my life. A mild case of seniori­tis may be set­tling in, but most of all the upcom­ing change.

 I moved out of my par­ents’ house in the fall of 2006 and haven’t moved back since. I’ve lived in other places, Mackinac Island and Washington D.C., while still a stu­dent, but always with the knowl­edge that the place where I would always be return­ing to would be Big Rapids. Realizing that this would not always be the place I slept most of my nights, the city has cer­tainly grown on me in numer­ous respects.

 Ironically enough, there are sev­eral things I have to do to be able to grad­u­ate that don’t involve the $40,000 or so that I’ve spent on aca­d­e­mics. Exit inter­views, paper­work need­ing sig­nage and all of the other admin­is­tra­tive things that, if not com­pleted, could make the last four years a moot exercise.

 But this e-mail made it real. Glancing at a cal­en­dar (some­thing I should prob­a­bly do more often) I saw there are only 72 days until graduation.

 Two and a half months, and the rest of our lives.