Yesterday, 4:30 pm, exams were officially over. I was in Joyner Library, being reminded of this reality in a way that the digital clocks on every floor and academic calendar at the bottom of ECU's website never could do.

I'm an individual whose life has become intertwined with East Carolina University's campus life. This has happened in ways I never anticipated when I came back to campus on February 23rd, 2014, to start working as an independent contractor proctor. I never could have expected to define a semester's closing by a drastic cessation of the number of students in Joyner Library.

These days, though, I readily do. In the open computer labs on the first, second, and third floor, Windows and Apple keyboards keys were not periodically issuing the all too familiar clicks into the early morning hours of December 12th. The study rooms, small and large, on the first, second, and third floors, devoid of the conversation and laughter intermittently drifting in the air that filled the library during Finals week (even drifting into the air of the room next door. The walls are really thin).

The study carrels, on the first second and third floor, not containing a soul hammering away at an essay or surfing the internet (and on December 10th, a student sleeping on the study carrel table. And I thought students in PJs and slippers was the oddest thing I'd see in the Library). Tables and chairs on the first, second, and third floor, once bustling at all hours of the day and night between December 5th-December 12th...empty.

Such an observation prompts me to contemplate this reality: how I react when the end of Finals happens.

Yesterday afternoon, I was on the second floor, in an area where, just the day before, an available seat couldn't be found, now looking out at rows of empty chairs. As I did this, I was reminded of a reality that never ceases to amaze me. Yes, it still has the capacity to amaze me, despite having the miracle take place every semester for the past four and a half years. As I stood in the area, I contemplated that it must be similar to witnessing the birth of a child. Yes, consider this comparison. No matter how many times that the miracle happens, it's like seeing it first the first time. No matter the commonality of every circumstance, it's like seeing the miracle for the first time.

Yesterday afternoon, I stood there, camera in hand, looking into the Finals generated void, reminded of this reality once again. It's one that also never ceases to sadden me a bit. Yes, it saddens me still, despite being a witness to the post-exam exodus that has happened every semester since post-Finals Spring 2014. The sadness actually makes just as much sense as the amazement, if I consider how a death analogy fits just as aptly as a birth one.

I always grieve a little for the loss--the loss of the hope and joy my Student Pirates bring to my life. I always grieve a little because of the difference that not being surrounded by people I value greatly will make in my life. Even if this is the seventeenth semester that I've encountered the grief, it's like experiencing it for the first time.

Fortunately, there is this one marked difference when it comes to the death analogy. This death is always temporary--the loss never lasts more than a few weeks. In hindsight, it always seems like the weeks passed by quickly, too. Fortunately, there is this one marked similarity when it comes to the birth analogy. It always comes, even if it never seems like it will (and I've always heard that the last few weeks, it seems like the pregnancy will never end).

December 13th, 21 days, and counting. January 2nd...it can't get here soon enough.