I had a Last Moment this week.
Last Moments (patent pending) are fourth-year realizations one experiences whilst completing a particular activity or participating in a given event for the last time. Distinct from simple “lasts” — which refer to the passive, unacknowledged last completion of an activity — Last Moments entail a recognition of finality.
Here’s an example of the former. You do all of your reading for the upcoming discussion (wild, I know — file this illustration under “Fantasy” if you must). You don’t think too much of it. But after this discussion, senioritis kicks in — a condition for which we have no synonym here in the land of numbered years.
You complete half the readings for the next discussion. The next, a quarter. Finally, you get to the point where you’re using your powers of deduction to make contributions based on chapter titles alone. You completed your final reading for said discussion weeks ago, but didn’t think to acknowledge that it would be the last page you read. Therefore, a last, not a Last.
In contrast, my recent Last happened as I left my advisor’s office. I am very fortunate to have had a positive experience with my major advisor over the past two years, so we were able to spend most of our meeting chatting comfortably about my post-graduation plans and the merits of taking golf to balance writing a thesis next semester.
As we finished our discussion and I left the office, I mused about how and why it was so difficult for me to wrap my mind around the prospect of choosing classes for the eighth and final time.
And then it hit me. Class selection may be an upcoming Last, but I had just completed another: my last official advising meeting.
It was a strange realization. I wasn’t particularly sad, as I will very likely cross paths with this advisor again in the next month and will almost certainly see him next semester. I was not closing the door to soliciting advice and general life suggestions from professors. But it felt meaningful, and I tried to understand why.
In trying to grapple with my premature nostalgia, I thought back to a recent conversation with a friend who has a very different attitude toward advising. Whereas I felt that I floundered my first semester because of a lack of guidance and believe I benefitted from actively pursuing small classes and face time with professors in subsequent semesters, my friend was content with never having met with an advisor or knowing a professor before his third year. He felt he had taken some wonderful classes and learned extensively from his experiences outside of his academic career, but he was unmoved by the fact that he did not have a professor who knew his name during his first few semesters.
At first, I was baffled. “That makes me so sad,” I told him.
“Why?” he responded. “It doesn’t make me sad. That wasn’t what I was looking for.”
I was intrigued. Previously — and admittedly, naïvely — I had assumed student-professor interactions were the gold standard, something everyone strived to take away from their U.Va. experience. As a University Guide, I am frequently asked about how U.Va. tries to mitigate some of the real and perceived disadvantages of large, anonymous classes, and am familiar with the mechanisms for facilitating these relationships. But I had never really considered the fact that it might not be one of every student’s priorities.
In considering the two experiences together, it became apparent that my final advisor meeting was one of my Lasts because these professorial and advisory relationships have mattered to me during my time at U.Va. But for many other fourth years, meeting with their advisors to plan their last semester may be retroactively labeled an unremarkable, lower-case “last.”
Thus, Last Moments are noteworthy because they recognize something that mattered to individuals throughout their University experience. They acknowledge that something was a fundamental part of a student’s time here, and its conclusion marks the end of a given era.
Another friend validated this analysis. Having missed more games than she attended, she doubted that she would find the last football Saturday particularly significant. But for the athlete or the devoted Hoo Crew member, there will likely be substantial meaning, memory and emotion attached to the last game.
Last Moments exist, and they are powerful. They may make for stories you tell for the rest of your life and they may induce passionate responses. They have the ability to articulate just what mattered the most to you as a Hoo, even when you cannot.
Caroline’s column runs biweekly Thursdays. She can be reached at c.trezza@cavalierdaily.com.
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