"Don't cry because it's over..

..smile because it happened." (Anon)

I am reminded suddenly of this quote this morning (technically this afternoon) as I wake up and feel a little sad.

Yesterday I graduated. It seems hard to believe (as I sit, pyjama-ed, looking around my overcrowded room whilst listening to Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber's back-catalogue) that yesterday I kissed Bill Bryson and had my degree given to me. I am usually very hard to please but the graduation ceremony was lovely. Bill Bryson (our chancellor) gave a succinct, yet somehow inspiring speech. Summing up he said that one should always take the time to look around and appreciate all that we have and all that there is in the world and that we should always strive to achieve what we want. It was a wonderful end to a joyous university time. Yes, I am sad to leave but I feel that wishing to go back would be an awful injustice to the happiness and sadness I had there: all the people I met and all the friends I made. In short, all the memories that were made- I would change none of them.

Maybe it is because the CD has made it to "Any dream will do," or maybe because this is the only way I can think of to obtain some sort of emotional closure; regardless I continue with this arguably overly-emotional post.

In my first week I met one of my best friends Anna, and hopefully she will always remain so. She is blunt and she is witty and she is intelligent and beautiful and she is everything I would hope to be. I made my P-maths friends: Gareth, Sam, Mike and Ken. I could not have hoped to find such like-minded people. They are just super and I am very pleased to call them my friends and I have absolute certainty that I always shall. At the end of third year Sam, Gareth and Mike left for the big wide world and I thought that, given Ken was doing such different modules to me, the final year would be such an anti-climax. But I was wrong. Along came John, and for this friendship I am so thankful. We had the best project meetings.. the best Algebraic Topology and Algebraic Geometry homework sessions. I am quite hard to deal with and John did this all magnificantly. He let his friends be my friends. He is so intelligent and loyal and so many more things. I have a sheet that he made for me one rainly, and particularly stressful, Thursday afternoon and I have kept it on my wall all year: on it a check list of things I shouldn't do. I shouldn't hide, I shouldn't run away and I shouldn't be scared. And he is, as reassuredly as he generally was all year, right. These words have impact, and even if he doesn't remember writing them I will still keep them. I hope he will always remember "Polylogarithms."

So how could wish to take all of this back? I can't and I shouldn't and I won't. Afterall what is life without change? To paraphrase Lorne from "Angel" (superior spin-off to Buffy) you can hold a note forever, but after a while this is just noise; it is the change that we listen for and it is the change that makes music. So now is the time to make more music.