I leave for college in less than 40 days. The day I leave, I’ll go to the airport with my mother. We will check in my many bags, go through security and maybe stop at Starbucks so I can buy my last Seattle hot chocolate for at least two months before boarding the plane.

Luckily, there is also a Starbucks at Johns Hopkins University, about a seven-minute walk from where my dorm will be (it’s lucky the coffee-shop chain that symbolizes home for me is everywhere). This is something I actually checked when making my final college decisions. Junior year, when I made my list of things a college must offer for me to consider it, “a Starbucks within walking distance” was right up there with “trees on campus” and “members of the opposite sex.”

A treeless Columbia, a boyless Wellesley and a Starbucks-lacking Claremont McKenna were eliminated together, with one fell swoop of my black ballpoint pen. Mostly, I was kidding when I put together my list. Now that my collegiate future seems to be materializing, however, I’m glad I took into account these day-to-day details of a life.

I keep receiving mail from Johns Hopkins. Some of it is from the Housing and Dining Department, and these mailings (ironically) are usually less personal than the mail I receive from the Office of the Registrar or Orientation Services. These are usually addressed “Dear Hannah” and begin rather ominously with a countdown meant to inspire excitement: “only two months left until we meet you in person on campus!” It isn’t excitement I feel. It’s terror.

I have less than 40 days to clean and organize my rooms at both my mom’s and dad’s houses, to read all the books I’ve been meaning to for years, to learn everything I possibly can from my viola teacher — not to mention, from my parents — and to spend time with my brother.

The worst part is, I know exactly where I came from. That makes it easy to miss, even preemptively. I don’t have nearly as good an idea of where I’m going, which makes it difficult to be excited about. How do we let go of the past without having some idea of a future to grab hold of in its place?

I can easily picture the Inglemoor High hallways where I no longer belong, and so I can easily imagine new students coming in and filling in all the spaces I’ve left. For graduated seniors, the desks that used to be ours, the clubs we used to be part of, the teachers we despised — there will be others who will come along and take our places.

But our futures, whether they involve college, work, travel, the military or whatever else, we haven’t lived them already, so it’s difficult to imagine them with such clarity. Left without the familiar to which we will return and without a clear picture of the fast-approaching future, we are like a storm of trapeze artists, suspended together in the moment after having let go of one bar before grasping the next.

Hannah Joo is an Inglemoor High graduate.

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