Ep. 14: Goodbye

Notes from the 29th of April-7th of May

And so, my time at Purdue, these wonderful months of my life, come to an end. The past week or so has been a severely emotional experience, but of the most beautiful kind: even, or perhaps because of, the immense sadness I felt.

I had my final exam on Friday night, and by the time I emerged on Saturday for a breath of exam-free air, the campus had already well and truly cleared out. Restaurants were closing for the Summer, only a few dining halls remained open, and most importantly the campus streets - only a few days ago flooded with people - now were barren. In many ways, it was only fitting that the following afternoon I would depart from Purdue, leaving it in much the same way that I had found it. But of course, whilst there were similarities in arrival and departure, on so many levels they couldn't have been any different. For one, I donned shorts and a T-shirt in place of thick coats and trackies. Of course, more centrally though, I had grown to love the place, to love the people.

In July of last year, I had selected Purdue as the location for my study exchange on a partial whim. I knew them well because of their prowess in college basketball, and I knew they had a good (aerospace) engineering school. This, combined with the fact that I could find mirrors of all the required units I needed to take, was good enough a reason to pick it. How very fortunate I am that I chose this place, because I could seriously not think of a better fit. I. Love. Purdue. Would I consider coming back here for post-graduate study as some have asked? Potentially, but it's a tall ask. In reflection, it is almost impossible for me to decipher how much of this affection stems from the intrinsic qualities of the college, and how much of it stems from the nature of a study exchange experience (namely its temporary nature) and the wonderful souls I met during that time. Half a year in West Lafayette is one thing. 5 years a completely other matter.

In the first article of this series, I spoke about the rushed nature of departing for exchange from my childhood home, from which my family would shortly be moving out of. So, too, was the experience of leaving Purdue chaotic and frantic. After going out late on Friday (see below), and spending much of Saturday saying farewell to the final few people on campus, I found myself on Sunday morning with a departure time of mid-afternoon and an obscene amount of stuff to do. All my bags were effectively packed, but I had to do a full clean of most of the apartment¹ and throw out/donate anything I wouldn't be taking with me.

Somehow, with the aid of some very special people, I managed to get it done. Whilst it did feel kind of terrible to be throwing out good linen and other such items, my conscience was slightly spared by being able to offload a heap of remaining groceries and other things to others who were sticking around on campus a little longer than I was. Very quickly, the apartment looked just the way I had found it back on a snowy Winter's day in January - bare, empty and vaguely clean. Seeing it like that made a bit emotional honestly. I had spent most every moment in that place feeling the experience that it would be there forever, even when of course I factually knew this to be false. But now it was really gone - for good.

One item I did not know how to properly dispose was a basketball that I had collected from the Purdue Gym lost property a couple of months ago. It was in really nice condition, so there was no way I was going to throw it out. Then again, I had precisely zero spare space in my luggage, let alone for an inflated basketball. I ended up coming up with a perfect work-around. One of the guys who came to pick up groceries was someone that I had met and become good friends with in the space of the preceding two weeks. He liked playing basketball, and so what better thing to do than write him a little note on it and give it to him as a parting gift? Again, cue more emotions.

Despite how completely overwhelmed with emotion I was, there was not much time to properly contemplate it. I had about an hour to get down to the bus stop and have lunch. Though I had managed to offload one of two suitcases to a friend to take to Melbourne with them, I still had to get a huge suitcase, duffel bag, backpack and camera bag about half a mile down the road to the campus centre, which left me pretty damn sweaty.

Counting down the final minutes at Purdue was utterly surreal. Regarding how one should feel in such moments, I always find it hard to compute anything of relevance for a future that I have no touchstone for. Perhaps that is why when, right on time, the shuttle bus pulled in and the call to board was given, it all it me in one fell swoop and left me a bit of a mess. This was it. I was probably leaving this place, these people, behind forever. I think the driver felt bad for me and so gave me a few extra minutes to vaguely collect myself, but eventually his patience ran out and the shuttle bus pulled away from the curb.

Soon Purdue was a barely visible point in the rear-view mirror.

Soon Lafayette was left well behind and replaced by endless fields of corn.

Soon I found myself in an airport terminal.

And soon America - with it Indiana, Purdue, and my life from the previous months - disappeared beneath the clouds.

On Friendships and Goodbyes

One thing of which I was proud was taking the time to meet up in the last dozen days or so here at Purdue with the people I am now humbled to call friends. As I mentioned previously, even with final exams upcoming, I still had sufficient spare time to make this happen. One of the sticking points however was that, for many of the international students. once their last exam was done they were leaving. Gone forever. In part, this was because the deadline for moving out was a mere day after the possible completion of finals.

I thought it would be nice, especially with a good camera handy, to take a picture for my journal with each person or persons that I hung out with. You can get a glimpse of the full list in this post I made to Instagram, however here is one such collage:

Saying goodbye to some of the most kind people I have so far met in my life was a very challenging prospect. The road ahead is unknown, but even months down the road from now, I know undoubtedly that I will still feel extremely blessed to have had the opportunity to cross paths with such folk. It is truly something that I do not wish to take for granted; not now, not ever.

I shared so many laughs, so many sonorous memories with these friends of mine, and quite clearly, then, a cause of my sadness on leaving is the signal of these times coming to an end. Call it a painful form of nostalgia. But there is a secondary layer to this, one that is distinctly future-looking. Namely, it is the concern of "What if that is the last of that particular experience with that particular person?" Because despite best intentions, and I'm sure your own life course to this point will intersect here, there is no guarantee that a connection will survive the corrosive acid of time and distance. And this is a very harrowing thought. We are, to be sure, at an advantage living in the times we do, where a fleeting friendship like this might be caught in the safety net of digital messaging platforms and allowed to propagate. But might does not imply will. It certainly does not imply probable.

This is why I think such farewells can often be legitimate troughs on the landscape of our happiness. We find ourselves buffeted from both sides of our wandering mind - nostalgia for a past that is lost, trepidation of a future where ties become cut. It is the emotional equivalent of a rock and a hard place. But, and this was something I had direct experience of these past few days, a low point on the function of our happiness need not correlate to a low point on the function of our well-being or fulfilment. Because despite finding myself this week at best in a latent state of sadness, it was unequivocally one of the best weeks of my life. Certainly one of the most meaningful. And precisely owing to the pain of farewells.

None of the above remarks deterred me from insisting to everyone I parted with that they stay in touch and message me whenever they had news. Only time will tell whether that holds true. Or, perhaps there is some benefit to these friendships fading away. We grow so attached to things in life. Letting go every now and again, recognising and appreciating that things are fleeting, mightn't be such a bad thing after all.

Fitting Farewells

On the topic of saying goodbye, it is only appropriate that I make specific reference to a few of the more memorable of such occurrences.

Alarmingly Good!

Earlier in the semester, I had been invited around to some Colombian friends of mine and they had made some Colombian food for us to partake in. I felt it was only right that I had them over to mine and returned the favour.

So it was that on Wednesday morning² I spent several hours going down to Walmart and acquiring the necessary groceries I would need to prepare the dinner I had in mind - a crispy skin fish with bean ragu - and dessert - pavlova. It turns out that an apartment with four guys in it also doesn't have much by the way of basic cooking supplies and equipment, so I had to get these too. Seemed a bit of a waste to, for instance, by a whisk that was probably only going to be used once, but oh well.

In any case, the process of preparing the food and getting the place cleaned up was quite enjoyable. Admittedly, I had to have two cracks at the pavlova, since I spent about 30 minutes whisking the first batch of egg whites before concluding that they had been sufficiently polluted by egg yolk and therefore needed to be tossed. My wrists and forearms were suffering by the end of this. Hand-whisking is not fun. The main course came together much more fluently. However, we had no proper cooking oil, meaning I was left with non-stick spray as the alternative. Also, I had very little experience using the stove top and consequently had very little understanding of what temperature each rotation of the dial corresponded to. As such, upon dropping the fish onto the pan I managed to set off the smoke alarm in our apartment repeatedly. Whoops. With the assistance of my roommates and guests opening the windows and using a tray to swipe smoke out, we managed to get everything under control. And a wonderful, wonderful meal was enjoyed!

Whilst it is clearly a lot of work to organise and host a dinner, I think an experience of like this makes me realise why perhaps so many people take such great pleasure in doing it. It was a lovely way to say farewell to the group.

A Night's Tale

The final two nights at Purdue were, fittingly, two of the most memorable. On the Friday night, having finished my final exam, I went out with a group - half exchange students, half Purdue students that had just graduated - and we went to what had become my favourite bar at this point - The G.O.A.T. in Lafayette.

Because it is located off of campus, you get a mix of college students and regular citizens alike. Which means that when stuff goes down, it can really go down. For instance, whilst sitting at the bar in conversation, a guy about two feet behind started pushing and shoving another. Which lead to security coming and trying to escort hin. Which lead to him getting into a brief fist-fight with the security. Nice! Though by this time I think most in the group were still enjoying themselves³, this was a good a reason as any to start vacating the premises before anything escalated further.

As for Saturday night. Well, I actually went on a date. Kind of spontaneous, and potentially hard to reconcile given that I was flying to a wholly separate continent the next day, but it seemed very much in the spirit of maximising this unique journey. It also, happily, gave me a chance to do things that I had been meaning to do all semester:

First, to do an obligatory run through the fountain in the Engineering Mall.

Secondly, I managed to find a restricted top-floor on the Civil Engineering building which, with everyone gone for the semester, was surprisingly left open. It gave some really nice views looking out across the whole Purdue campus.

Seeming to epitomise the way in which I wanted to engage with this experience, this was a really special way to conclude the chapter of my life at Purdue.

Finals Week

It would be wholly unfitting to not finish up with the concluding details of my academic life at Purdue. This week was Finals Week; unlike Monash, where exams are spread out over some 3 weeks, American colleges do it all in under 1. Fair enough, too, given the discrepancy in the marks' weighting to your overall grade.

Happily, the figurative plane landed safely on the three final exams that I had. Given that they were all scheduled (somewhat annoyingly) for the evening, my revision for each essentially consisted of pouring rapidly over past exams and content during the morning and afternoon of the day of each, giving myself a few hours before it commenced to wind down and refresh. An optimal strategy - absolutely not. But it went just fine.

For the semester, I ended up finishing with two A's and two A+'s. And for these latter two, control systems and integrated circuit design, I really wished Monash didn't adopt a pass/fail system since I scored well above a 90 and would have correspondingly receive a nice WAM boost, should they have been accounted for.

A Note From Me

If you have made it this far, thank you. I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of writing these weekly summaries the past many months, and if you have ready any of them, even a single sentence, I am beyond grateful for giving me an audience to reflect to. This does mark of course the final instalment in this little travel series, however it will surely not be the last such piece that I write. And when that time comes, if I can count you amongst my readership once more, I would be so very happy.

Thanks again.

Footnotes