What a quick three years! But, of course, it didn’t feel like that at the time. And I must confess that for months, I was ambivalent if not outright downtrodden about how I’d spent all of that. Like I’d done little else except except study and snack. But then, with motivation from within and without, I decided a few weeks ago to look both backwards and forwards with determination for the first time in a long while. And I realized… it’s not just about what I *did*, but what I *experienced*.

I met Lewis Black and Penn Jillette. I saw Henry Winkler, John Mulaney, Steven Wright, the Harlem Globetrotters, and Hannibal Burress live. And the concerts! TV on the Radio, Ke$ha, The Flaming Lips, Icona Pop, Spoon, and Gordon Lightfoot. I visited France, Norway, Iceland, Finland, and even northern Ohio.

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I weathered a blizzard that cleared the streets of Manhattan. I helped get my team to the semifinals of an international moot court competition. I performed live poetry of both the slam and romantic varieties. I saw a blood moon and held a tarantula, though unfortunately not at the same time. I got my first story published outside of a college compendium.

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I made my best Halloween costume ever. I went to my first hockey game, lacrosse game, and full-out karaoke session. I sat on the senior board for the centennial issue of Cornell Law Review, and sat in the audience for the sesquicentennial of the entire school. I built my own computer.

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I helped stop a bee infestation during Thanksgiving. I volunteered at a soup kitchen, packaged food for third-world children, and helped build plant beds for a public park. I stood up for the First Amendment at the National Coalition Against Censorship, researched the future of AI with the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, helped the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project do just that, and made sure the International Human Rights Clinic continued to deserve its title. I hung out in a replica of Seinfeld’s kitchen.

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I made new friends, domestic and international. I drank in a bar made of ice and saw sunsets that looked forged from fire. And yeah, I got a job at a law firm. And throughout it all, Ithaca was a beautifully rural oasis.

If all the world’s a stage, I want to thank my costars and those who enjoyed my performance, or at least offered constructive criticism instead of riffing in the cheap seats. So on a theatrical note (and since I’ve always best expressed myself through music, never mind not being able to carry a tune), here’s a song about old anxieties giving way to new optimism–to close one “playlist” of life and start anew!

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