One afternoon a few weeks ago, I sat bleary-eyed at a library computer, trying to write the introduction to my senior English portfolio. I urged myself: Maggie, consider your improvement as a writer. Do it in the 50 or so minutes before the 4 o'clock deadline, in about 1000 words. How have I improved? What have I learned about writing? I stared at the keys, trying to think, trying not to dwell on the irony of my late start.

In my experience as a student — which is as long as I can remember — I've frequently been asked to assess progress. We all have. Think of math equations, science experiments, book reports that explain how a character has changed. More recently, think of cover letters, "personal statements," and graduate school admission essays. To advertise our assets to the public, we are encouraged to embellish our progress. I was foolish, but because of hard work, now I am wise. Cause has led to effect, hypothesis to conclusion, experience to understanding. We all move forward. 

As graduation nears, and so do the senior events — the impending brunches and graduation parties, hugs and handshakes — I feel an increasing aversion to the idea of progress. Sometimes I feel like its being imposed upon me — a progress-shaped corset around my still flawed, lopsided form. I'm graduating. I've learned a lot and I've done pretty well. But shouldn't I be smarter? Shouldn't I know something — anything — for sure?89

Still at the computer, grumbling over my portfolio intro, I heard voices behind me chatting gregariously about their future. "I've been offered a position downtown...I'm applying for this internship...I have to go to Chicago for an interview..." I pulled my hat tighter on my head to focus. I wanted to turn around and tell them to stop. Didn't they know that their conversation was rude, that in talking about their own plans, they were taunting me with their progress? I hadn't applied for a job yet. My resume wasn't finished. Heck, I hadn't even showered in days. 

Of course, these reactions were irrational. But I'm a little sensitive these days, sensitive to the dreaded questions about the future, to the short a sound at the beginning of the phrase "...after graduation..." This is an awkward question not just because I don't have concrete plans, or because I'll be sad to leave my friends when the time comes.

No. The questions about "plans" irk me because they reduce the meaning of my last four years — indeed my last 16 years — into a single practical step forward. College hasn't been a linear experience. With each day, I haven't gotten better. I still trip on the sidewalk on my way to class. I'm still awkward in meetings with professors, and in conversations with people I think are cooler than me. I still don't know how to fix a car, my own computer, or how to be anything equivalent to an adult. I still write mediocre papers and have mediocre thoughts. 

So I want to respond to these people, not with answers, but with stories. Stories about waking up at six a.m. and driving to Athens to play ultimate Frisbee in raining, forty degree weather. Stories about laughing hysterically with friends, while playing Catch Phrase in the Smith Date Study. I want them to meet my roommate, and all my friends. I want them to watch the OWtsiders, Pitch Black, and the Babbling Bishops. I want to tell them about the Women's House, about all the SLUs, the way the residents come out from hibernation in the spring, sit on our porches and lawns in the evenings reading, playing music, or tossing a Frisbee. The way, on the warm days when you don't have much homework, the whole campus can feel like a festival.

But they'll never know, because they haven't been here. So I guess I can't blame them for asking the obvious, question of what has it all amounted to? I think we know. But we don't know in the words of an application essay. We know in these disjunctive ups and downs, in these half-images and memories. Things will never be like this again. What will we do?

I didn't finish my portfolio introduction that afternoon. I took it home for the weekend, and turned it in Monday morning. Progress isn't something that can be considered in 50 minutes or in four years, even. It's a little more complicated, a lot more difficult to explain. And really, taken as a whole, without regard for that stupid linear measuring stick of where we are going to next, hasn't it been delightful?

Maggie Roush is a senior Ohio Wesleyan English major from Westerville, Ohio