Last night I officially finished all of the work I had left to do in my college career. Now all that is left is graduation on Saturday. It’s kind of a strange feeling to know that I am done with “homework”, done with grades, and only 3 short days away from being done with this chapter of my life completely. It’s exciting, terrifying, and sad all at once.

My work was complete after giving a presentation for my marketing research class and completing my take home final. Throughout the semester, I have been working with a great group of 5 other girls on this marketing research project. Our job was to research ways to successfully market the new boutique Hattie’s Branches to Florida Southern females. Unlike other school projects, this was actually real rather than a hypothetical situation, we actually did all of the research ourselves, and worked with the owners of the store. We called our group SixChix Marketing since there was 6 of us and it fit us and the project really well. All semester long we designed surveys and distributed them, put up advertisements around campus, conducted observational research and more. It was a lot of work but it wasn’t that bad, luckily I had a great group of girls to work with and we accomplished our objectives.

Last night we met at Hattie’s Branches to present all of research and results to the owners and of course our professor who stood in the background as an “observer”. We had to create a book that has all of our research, background information, objectives and results in it to give to them. They really liked the book and all of the work we did. The presentation was pretty informal and lasted only about 20 minutes. I think it was a success, they seemed to really like it and hopefully our professor did too!

After finishing the presentation I was really relieved, but still not done with everything. When I returned home I had to complete my take home final for the class as it was due by midnight. It was only 5 questions and pretty easy so it didn’t take very long and I hope I did well. After I sent it to my professor I was officially DONE!

It felt really good to be done, I don’t think it has even officially sunk it yet. I still feel like I have school and classes next week. It’s really weird to know that I have been taught all that I will be taught at college. I feel really prepared for the “real” world and can’t wait to put what I’ve learned to good use. I’m really excited to find out what life has in store for me, like where I’ll work, live etc. It’s really crazy to think that it’s time to be a “grown up” and do all of these things, but I am so excited for it. It is the beginning of the rest of my life, scary but exciting too.

There is some sadness that comes will the excitement and relief however. I will miss all of the people that I have met here and some of my really awesome professors. I was thinking yesterday how weird it is that after Saturday I won’t be able to just go up to the FSC pool or gym to use it, things that I have taken for granted over these last four years because, hey they were always there. So, I’m definitely going to miss those perks that come with being a student.

Despite all of these mixed emotions, it really is time to move on. I realized last week when I was out at Shuckey’s, the bar that I usually know almost everyone at that it’s time. I looked around the place and didn’t recognize hardly anyone even though they were all FSC students. They were mostly freshman and sophomores just starting out their college careers. So overall I am really glad to be done and excited for what the future will bring! Now time to clean up my rental house and pack up all my stuff (ugh!).