Kelly Long

There's this strange thing that happens to you at Vassar. You wake up one morning and you feel old. That sounds silly, I know: I'm only 21. We're none of us who we were when we first came here. Look at photos of your friends from freshman year. Look at yourselves now. Somehow, we've all grown up. We're women and men, with no memory of where we shed our childhood-selves.

I'm trying to remember where I left mine, and here's what I think: I left it in the 2-East stairwell of Cushing, where my friends filled their room with packing-peanuts one Sunday afternoon, and then swam in it like fish in a too-small-tank. I left it in the Art-105/106 lecture hall, where mine was the only light that didn't work, and where I lost my heart to Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. I left it on the smelly couch where I cried—to the point of embarrassment—when Obama won the presidential election (don't worry, they were happy tears!). I left it in McAuley's, where I laughed until my sides hurt while my friends stood up and did a drunken cover of Jewel's "You Were Meant For Me" on karaoke night. I left it in my senior thesis carrel (known affectionately as "Carrel Carol"), where I got on a first-name basis with Mark Rothko, and threw dirty notes to my friend sitting two carrels in front of me. I left it in the hidden parts of the Chapel, where I ran around barefoot at midnight while waiting, with the other senior coordinators, to welcome the newest members of the Daisy Chain. I left it somewhere over by the New England building, where I got lost looking for Sander's Classroom on my very first day of freshman classes, and was rescued by a friendly senior named Hannah (thanks Hannah!). I left it on the roof of the water-tower behind Baldwin where I star-gazed with the first boy I ever fell in love with. I left it in the basement of the Loeb, where I was told to close my eyes, and was handed a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian bird sarcophagus. No big deal. It was left here, and there, in pieces too small to gather, too small to hold on to.

Vassar has made me brave. I don't mean "I-can-watch-horror-movies-by-myself-in-the-dark" brave. I still won't do that. I mean brave with my mind, and brave with my heart. I've come to a place where I know that new ideas don't hurt (much), and that letting people into your heart is a strength. Some of them will stay there, and some of them will float away. Our lives are so circular: it's just time to part ways with people and places, and, to a certain extent, I think that fate takes care of you. When people drift out of your life, new ones come in and spackle up those cracks. Does anything ever really end? I don't think so. I will forever cut sandwiches diagonally because my best friend from elementary school told me it was bad juju to do it down the middle. People don't ever really disappear. They're in your sandwich.

So. Dear Vassar. This is my love note to you. I don't want to leave…but I'm ready to.

—Kelly Long is the outgoing president of Promoting Equality And Community Everywhere (PEACE).