Time Flies

This past weekend my mom, my uncle and I traveled up to Greensboro, NC to see my cousin graduate from college. It was all very exciting. I love graduations for one and then it was a nice opportunity to spend time with family that I rarely see. So it was a very good weekend. The UNC Greensboro graduation was really nice. It took place at Greensboro Coliseum and then there was a departmental graduation later on in the afternoon. I enjoyed being with my family during the day and catching up on their lives and what they're doing. We only stayed one night but I wish we had been able to stay 2 just to have another day to be with the fam. The graduation got me thinking about being a new college graduate 7 years ago. I graduated in 2004 from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. I thought that the world was just waiting with open arms. That theory only took about a month to dispel when I had trouble finding a job. I found temporary stints working at Victoria's Secret and Barnes and Noble. Neither of which I was really suited to do. You always feel that there are certain things that you should be able to do without any problem or complication but then you learn that they are not as easy as they look or that you are not as skilled as you think you are. That's what happened to me, both of those things, when I tried to work in retail. So I did what a lot of my friends did. I retook the GRE and headed back to academia!

But the graduation did get me thinking about the fact that my cousin is the first person in my family that I watched grow up. I have known her since only a few days after she was born. I am 7 years older than her so throughout our childhood we played and did things together. It's so weird to be the person that is like, "I remember you when you were this big!" But I do remember her at many ages and stages of her life. And now she is a young woman and starting out on her own path in life. Time certainly passes by so quickly. That's why it is so important not to take any time that you have for granted. Next year my next cousin who is 12 years younger than me will be graduating from high school! So there will be a similar blog post next June about the sense of nostalgia that I have about watching my family member, well my first cousins anyway, grow up before my eyes. It was a really monumental moment to be watching my cousins grow up before me eyes!