Last week I donned a strange, brain-sucking hat made of cardboard, a long, flowing robe, and was hastily photographed in front of a green screen by strange people before having my name read into a microphone and walking 20 feet across a stage to have a diploma placed in my arms. And with that, I graduated.
In the midst of all of this pomp and circumstance and eating out a million times with family and having confusing homework withdrawals during the haze of these last few days, I’ve started thinking about numbers. When using numbers as a means of measurement, everything is concise, everything is quantifiable, everything can be understood. College is all about numbers. Numbers are used to determine what grades you get, what GPA you have, how well you do on a test, how many credits you need to graduate, how many classes you need to take to graduate, and basically tell you how successful you are in your efforts. They’ve told me a lot of things over the past few years. They’ve given me honors, they’ve helped me keep my scholarship, and they’ve told me again and again, that, according to the school system we use to determine intellectual ability, I have done rather well, and, apparently, am pretty brainy. But, despite all of that, and all of the meaning we place on numbers in college, I don’t feel all that amazing. I don’t feel like I've finished my learning, or really accomplished anything particularly spectacular. The numbers say I have, but I'm still not sure how I feel about that. It's a strange feeling.
But what I do know is that there are a lot of other things that have factored into my college experience and as I look back on all of them, ridiculous and meaningful, I thought I'd share some. And do so by attaching numbers to them in the same form as a similar post I wrote nearly three years ago. Because I can. So here they are.
Number of times slipped on campus in icy conditions: 0. Number of buildings on campus I had class in: 9. Number of Majors declared: 2. Number of programs I applied to: 1. Number of programs I got into: 0. Number of boxes of White Cheddar Broccoli Pasta Roni I consumed: 43. Number of Egg McMuffins I made and also consumed: 148. Number of people I married: 1. Number of part time jobs: 2. Number of papers written: 72. Number of all-nighters: 0. Number of nights nearly without sleep: 13. Number of times I went to the gym: 2. Number of apartments lived in: 7. Number of apartments on the first floor of a complex: 3. Total number of roommates: 26. Number of classes taken: 44. Number of classes I genuinely enjoyed: 40. Number of horrendously awkward dates: 8. Number of horrendously or even moderately awkward dates with my now husband: 0. Number of fire drills that got me out of class/work early: 2. Number of nights I walked home in the dark feeling paranoid: 132. Number of phone calls made to my mom in times of distress: 1,031. Number of inspiring moments in class: 346. Number of laptops I used: 1. Numbers of laptops I used that I affectionately named Felix: 1. Number of times I saw my parents in person during these four years: 11. Number of TV shows or movies my roommates watched that drove me insane: 17. Number of sisters-in-law I got: 1. Number of brothers-in-law: 3. Number of road trips taken: 5. Number of miles driven on those road trips: 7,832. Number of pets: 0. Number of notebooks used: 37. Number of pens used: 45. Number of pairs of boots I wore holes into: 4. Number of pizzas consumed: 59. Number of papers published: 1. Number of times I did things I didn't think I could do: 36.
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