Another End

The first wave of students had just gone, leaving myself with two kids for the night. It was difficult and surreal knowing the end of yet another summer high school program had come. What was more surreal was how quickly the program moved after the end of the first week as well as the fact that there would not be any more summer programs for me after this. This was truly the end of my relationship with NYU.

Despite that, however, I did manage to ensure the enjoyment of my and other kids' final night. The major events, in a nutshell, was buying my kids beer with the other PA's, learning the photo kids got busted and then playing Super Smash Bro's with a kid named Woody. Eventually we started free-styling and, well, he's good but even after spending a semester living in tight quarters with a rapper, I am incapable of stringing rhymes together in a consistent beat. We also quoted "I'm the Juggernaut Bitch" while playing Super Smash Brothers.

Overall, I'm glad that the kids had a good time without getting caught. It makes me a little proud.

I don't know why, though, but my endings here never seem to go the way I want them to. Or, well, to be more accurate, they go great but what I go to seems to be rather hard. I guess that, also, is an inaccurate statement, it may just be that I've spent all of this summer postponing the inevitable; ending my college experience and moving home.

Family is a funny thing because they always manage to get you to hate them and love them at the same time.

I had waited until the morning to begin packing, as I always do. Generally it's a big mistake but this time it was okay because I didn't have a lot of stuff. Eventually the last of the kids left the program and I was left in an empty dorm. I was, for the most part, packed and ready to go, the first time I ever left the program on move-out date for the students. They tried to take my I.D. at the front desk so I had to explain to them that I am (was) a student of NYU and not a student of the program so I could still get into Tisch and edit my film.

At any rate, around 3PM my parents came to help me move home. I knew it was going to be bad when, even before I checked out of the dorm they started to bother me about stuff I had to do once I got home.

I wonder sometimes, though, if they have bad timing or I just have an extremely reduced amount of patience with them.

I finish up at my dorm and check out and get home, sadly leaving New York and sending a thank you/goodbye text to my fellow PA's and I come home to a group of overly sarcastic cousins. I think that it has a lot to do with perspective. It's always difficult coming home to my family because no matter what happens, they remain skeptical and confident that they know better.

I guess part of it is because, especially with the film/entertainment industry, there's so much behind the scenes of what happens that they just don't understand how things work. I think there's also a disconnect with them because work is just work for all of them, but for me, film making has become a sort of life for me, breeding a community and family of it's own, a family and community where, at least when connected with NYU, I feel like I can navigate it comfortably. Even without NYU I still feel like I can navigate these treacherous waters while only gaining a few cuts and bruises.

I guess you have to wake up from the dreams some time, but I guess that's when you try to find a way to turn them into reality.