9 Sq. Meters in Paris: Another Year Older, and Un Peu Wiser

How can this be? How can I be 22 already? I actually like getting older, as I feel each year is usually better than the one before it, but I hate not having control over important things in my life, like something as significant as age. My birthday came in the middle of finals week, after one of my hardest semesters of college. It wasn't supposed to be this way, study abroad is supposed to be a breeze, but somehow taking 5 classes so I could graduate a year early in subjects I had no background in turned out to be pretty tough. After an incredibly stressful week--months, really--of papers and more papers and film projects and exams, I finally finished COLLEGE this past Friday. This whole time I've felt like I was going to fail, but as with every semester, I pull through and actually got good grades. It hasn't really sunken in, especially since so many things are changing right now. That Friday, the night of my birthday party, also marked most people's last weekend in Paris (I'm staying an extra two weeks). The night was the culmination of a lot of things--getting older, leaving Paris, the final stress of classes and now the excess energy, being done with school, now trying to figure out the next phase of my life in the midst of a recession--that came to a wonderful, needed drunken explosion. All in all a great way to celebrate the end of one phase of my life and the beginning of another, all in the most glamorous city in the world.