TL:DR, yes, this is my “last first” column. I know my long-winded ramblings put to print seldom have an answer to the questions I pose in their titles, rather they methodically hint around a fable-esque lesson that I have learned through diligent, albeit sporadic, internal reflection. But not this time; there’s no getting around it. I just started my last semester of college and the home stretch seems to shrink every day.

You may be asking, “Laken, what do you mean by a ‘last first’ column? Is that not an oxymoron?” The answer is yes and good on you for passing A.P. Language and Composition! Nevertheless, just as this topic seems self-contradictory and confusing, that is exactly what it feels like. I am engulfed in a wave of excitement! I get to leave John Carroll and be a real person. Then I realize, I have to leave John Carroll and be a real person. My “last firsts” remind me of this consistently.

Jan. 16, 2024 was my “last first” day of college. I had my “last first” radio broadcast. I had my “last first” one-on-one with my Head of Hall. I ordered my “last first,” but still horrendously mid, meal from The Inn Between (the emotions stirring in my chest weren’t the only things that were bittersweet). What first started only as the flipping of a mere page is now turning into the end of the chapter and the bindings are starting to run ragged from how many times I keep reminiscing. The “last first” concept may seem a little redundant or even outright silly, but these tiny moments of recognition and reflection are starting to pile up. I am writing this on my “last first” deadline night and I am sitting here piecing through stories with a tiny lump in my throat.

I think back to a recent time when I put gas in my car and I heard a line in a fleeting song echoing around the pumps. While I think the ballad is about lost romance and longing for love or whatever, the first lyric says “time is just a useless measurement of pain.” This excerpt accurately summarizes the theme of this unstructured monologue. The minutes passing are a signal that my presence at Carroll will soon be limited to jumbled headlines and specks of paint on a lion outside Pacelli.

But what is there to be pained over? Why does it sting to do what every person goes to college to do: graduate? Why would I rather have 50 semesters with 18 credits each than face a finished degree evaluation? This is an accomplishment; I should brandish it, not lament it. Can the end of such a journey be this fickle?

Frankly, it can. I remember in the summer of 2022 looking at the then-19-year-old Grace Sherban ’25 and saying I could live some days over and over again, never looking for progress, only wading in the water. That was nearly two years ago and the clock has gotten faster with the tides rising quickly. Sherban is no longer 19-years-old; the time really does fly by.

No, I still don’t want to grow up. Although my senioritis is beginning to cripple me beyond belief with my measly 14 credit hours, I still would feel comfortable going through the motions of college over and over again. In my COM-4998 course with Dr. Brent Brossmann, we were asked if we were prepared to enter a space outside of the careful watch of the clock tower. My honest response is that I am petrified. I want to continue floating, not pressing on.

I understand that I don’t have much of a choice at the end of the day. I have to leave John Carroll and be a real person. There is a bit of a nagging feeling that I do not know who that real person is, but I assume the discovery will come after the acceptance that there is actually a Laken on the other side of the veil of May 2024; a version of myself that is accepting of this fate feels so foreign but I know it is possible with an immense amount of pressure and conscious effort. First, we have to get to a point where we acknowledge that the date I walk across the stage is nearing no matter what efforts we exert.

And yes, I use the word “we” because we are in this together. You, the reader, have seen me go through trials and tribulations more than many have. After all, my columns are just soliloquies and every story has a conclusion, one we both lay in wait for. From my actual firsts like my haphazard column on habit tracking in April 2021 or the earliest time I set foot on campus, you have been here alongside me. I wonder what it is like to watch my path from the outside like one-way glass. Has it been as exhilarating and gut-wrenching as it has been on this end? Do you also fear what happens when I put down the pen to turn my tassel?

Now you follow along as I muddle through my last, not “last first,” but truly last semester at JCU. Who knows? Maybe my final column will be slightly melancholy but littered with an overwhelming sense of pride and (fingers crossed) embracing a world where Keeping up with Kincaid is a relic of the past, not an ongoing saga in the paper. I hope it is a hymn of love and that I can indulge in it with you all, not shirk away from the inevitable clicking of the countdown.