It’s almost over.
The more I repeat it the less reality the statement can hold. Time reveals the concept that in less than 48 hours, spread across a nation and measurable as locations on a map, we will be dots hundreds of kilometres apart.
It’s hard to wrap our minds around that.
When my plane bursts through the clouds again Friday morning on my return to smoggy, stylish, rude, urban (and beloved) Toronto, it’s immeasurable how quickly the past month will seem as if it had bolted by.
Snapshots in words. The glimpse:
0845 - A scurried dash to breakfast. Sausages. Pancakes. Coffee .
0900 – A visit from the Registrar’s Office. Energetic Shad alum working as Dalhousie staff brings a sampling of university life to the seminar room
1000 – Friendly jostling relay race (complete with eggs and spoons) pits House groups against one another.
1200 – Usual buffet lunch in Howe Hall Dining Room. Old-fashioned hamburgers. Taco casserole. Grapeseed icecream.
1330 – Final meeting of Shad Valley House groups. Enter CuED Inc.’s lingering thoughts; the debrief of the House Cup competition closes under the sun with a group hug
1430 – Penultimate committee meeting. Different Shad groups struggle to bring together their different parts of our month’s final impression. Banquet. Monthbook. Open Day. Variety Show.
1630 – Free time to daydream for a short window of half an hour.
1700 – Dinner and a stolen bean salad.
1830 – A winner is chosen for the House Cup competition to represent Dalhousie at the Shad Cup. Intense voting. A split of 50/50 down the middle between two final projects
1900 – Packing time is allotted on the schedule. Staff must patrol the halls to curb the number of Shads sitting hopelessly on their beds staring listlessly at their cluttered floors of memories.
2000 – A secret event pulls back the veil to reveal swing dancing. Lessons given by the Dalhousie Swing Dance Society complete with jazz music and a live band.
2200 – Broomball, a game with sneakers on the hockey rink. Shads organize themselves into groups to play until after midnight on Dalhousie’s glossy ice.
0030 – Dazed walks back to the dorms in search of warm beds and slumber.
0100 – A goodnight and the dreamy collapse
Lucy Liu, Shad Valley Dalhousie University 2010
Hometown: Markham, Ontario
