A virus ate my Windows. At least that's what I've gleaned using my Blue's Clues detective skills. Just like in the show, there were three bold-faced indications that this was the problem. First, there was the fact that when I turned my computer on, it proceeded to the Dell screen and then went blank as if it forgot what comes next. I tried prompting it, typing "Windows, stupid" into the DOS screen but it just beeped back at me with an agitated monotone bleep.
The second clue was a phone call I received from the Link the day after I dropped off my hefty Inspiron 6000, her hinges loose and battery missing.
"Ma'am," the man on the phone said, trying, I think, to sound sympathetic. "We just wanted to get your permission to delete the McAfee you have installed and upgrade you to the free new version available to all Duke students because, well... yours is... old and, doesn't do anything..."
He ended on an upward inflection as if asking me if my McAfee didn't do anything. He should have known, though, that anyone with a 2002 version of McAfee installed on their computer probably doesn't know what it does, much less if it does that job effectively. I rummaged through my desk drawer for the installation CD, recognizing it by the red 3-D virus illustration. 2002 wasn't that long ago. I slid the disc back into the foamy black sleeve and put it away for a rainy day.
The last clue was the garble scribbled across the consent sheet I had to sign while picking up my computer the next day. I stared at the report, feeling as though the Link technicians were scolding me through the sprawling hand-writing. To be honest, I didn't understand much of it, didn't really try, but a virus sounded like a plausible enough conclusion. Case closed.
I took this all a bit hard at first, sad to be losing my four-year companion (her name is Sherbert, by the way), my information powerhouse, the wheezing soulmate that had tracked my shifts in musical tastes and held my stores of photos and papers and lab reports galore. Sure, her blue-screening tantrums had become a bit trite, her lethargy frustrating, her need for wall outlets since her battery kicked the bucket unnervingly inconvenient. But then I embraced it, embraced the circularity of it all, that my companion should pass so climactically just as I prepare to close the final chapter of my Duke career, our Duke career. It was wonderfully neat and predictable and for a second I was content to think that perhaps the goodbyes wouldn't be so hard, that reinvention would not be so exhausting, that the new people and places wouldn't be so terrifying.
And then she came back to life. Huffing and flickering, she came back from the Link breathing new vigor, flashing that tulip desktop with uncanny clarity. The old problems were still there, but her Windows flag sailed higher than ever, its primary colors gleaming in the LCD glow. So much for circularity. So much for neatness.
It wasn't my first attempt either. Before it, there was the thesis, which I thought would mark the end, would bring some startling revelation about my purpose in life, but in reality only brought the beginning of the other work I had been putting off all semester. There was the last issue of Towerview, my last thumbprint on the organization that has drained weeks and months of my life in the form of sleepless days and nights spent inside a cramped office, but that has given me back so much more in the experiences I've gained, the person it has made me, the friends it has given me. Standing across from Gerald Henderson as he posed humbly for his Towerview cover shot, I knew that even G couldn't make me feel better about the end, that nothing could really cap off four years spent doing something you love.
And then there were some less conventional ways of saying goodbye. There was the first beer I finished entirely on my own, slamming it down with undue finality and waiting for epiphany to strike (it didn't, in case you didn't get that from the computer story), the final workout in Wilson that after 200 overzealous crunches left my abs in agony for days, the last meal in the Loop that, anticlimactically, tasted like every other meal at the Loop. I yearned for something authentic, something Duke, something conclusive to draw a line between this side and the side I'll be on when May 11 rolls around. I scarfed down Pauly Dogs, nibbled on French toast while perusing Art at the Nasher, studied on the second floor of Perkins and even made tentative plans for my first real visit to Shooters.
I marveled at the Chapel under the sun and under the stars, I danced barefoot in the Gardens and I watched the cherry blossoms bloom, the wind blowing their powder white petals over lawns and cobblestone.
But I still don't know how to say goodbye, how to let go, how to move on.
So instead I'm going to hold on for dear life; I'm going to do it for me and for Sherb. And when I go down, when I board that midnight train bound for anywhere, I'll do it kicking and screaming.
Shreya Rao is a Trinity senior. She is a co-editor of Towerview and former news editor.
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