The End

The End

My GEK1046: Intro to Cultural Studies projectmates and I finally uploaded our project online yesterday. Samantha and I worked the longest and hardest on it (the day before I was powered by coffee and slept at 7AM making the rough final draft, as Sam was similarly burdened with a truckload with essays to do on top of her church commitments), thus we both felt totally relieved that it was finally finished. It was a Powerpoint presentation about The Real Cultural Influence of Reality TV, and I personally feel it was a well-done project. I handled the layout and design, apart from a good chunk of the text, and I even included a lot of fun editorial cartoons & comic strips and googled (and searched in Flickr) for really nice images to make the presentation look sleek and classy. Each in our group of five of course all contributed input, and everyone wanted it to work. As it was only Sam and I who chose the module to be letter-graded instead of opting for the pass/fail option (module not included in cumulative grade calculation), we had a lot more at stake and thus we were given free rein to tweak it as much as we wished. Congratulations to the whole group for a job well done.

The submission was significant to me. It marked the end of the various required submissions and lectures and tutorials of the semester. It marked the beginning of Revision Week, in preparation for next week's exams. This particular semester violently took its toll on me, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and thus allow me to mark the end of that ugly period now, and consider the revision and the exams separate.

* * *

Endings are funny things. They are poignant reminders of how we performed in the events leading to it, they teach us closure, and the need to move on. I'm also graduating very soon, and hence the concept of "The End" is particularly resonant to me.

There are many endings that happen every day, particularly recently for me, and I think these deserve particular attention, so we're not caught off-guard. More importantly, to borrow from the band Semisonic, every new beginning is some other beginning's end. Time to start afresh.

It's time to take a bow, drop the curtains, roll the credits. It's been interesting, thank you very much, but now, on to the next leg.