Saying Goodbye!: Tales of a Mancunian Lost in the City of Angels

By David Sustana, University of Southern California, United States

Howdy again, and for the last time, for now! If you’ve been keeping up with these blog posts throughout the past academic year, then you probably already know that the adventures that I’ve been sharing had been stretching further and further past the City of Angels, but for this last blog post, I’d like to reel things back to the place they started: South Central Los Angeles, home to the University of Southern California!

I guess we should rewind things to the afternoon after my last exam. (I’ll mostly skip over the exam period, since that’s where we left off in my last post and since there (thankfully) wasn’t anything very significant to report.)

As I’m sure you’ve experienced before, there is always a sudden rush of clarity that you reach once you’ve turned in your last exam and emerge from a mental state that worships revision. Upon reaching this moment of clarity, if you’re like me, you’re then always grounded by the subsequent realisation that you still have a huge amount of work to do in terms of moving out and tying up loose ends. It’s easy and rational to justify pushing these things off when you’re in peak exam season, but they’re always right on your heels once it’s finally over.

And so, the usual dance of packing what I can fit into my luggage and deciding what to do with what I can’t fit ensued. The latter involves the very tedious process of calculating whether it’s cheaper to just bin what I can’t fit (and rebuy it later) or check an extra bag on the plane for it. (For what it’s worth, USC Housing provided massive containers in the lobbies of each accommodation to collect donations of unwanted items, but unfortunately none of my belongings were eligible for donation.)

Once I was finally past this stressful nightmare (binning something is so difficult to do, even if it’s economically the cheaper alternative), I could finally move on to the fun things that I wanted to spend the rest of my time at USC on.

First, I had to head over to the campus Starbucks and buy a bunch of snacks and drinks in order to use up my remaining Dining Dollars balance, and then to the Honors Dining Hall (my favourite of the three dining halls) in The Village in order to use my last meal swipe.

Each student’s meal swipe/Dining Dollars allotment will depend on the meal plan that you ended up choosing, but for mine (the Apartment meal plan), I was allotted at the start of the term $150 in ‘Dining Dollars’ to use at (I believe) any campus restaurant, in addition to 40 swipes that I could use at any of the three all-you-can-eat dining halls.

Neither the swipes nor the Dining Dollars roll over to the following semester (not that that was relevant in my case anyway), and any unused funds are not refunded to you, so everyone is always rushing to the campus eateries at the last minute in order to use their funds before it’s too late.

Anyway, at the Honors Dining Hall, I enjoyed all-you-can-eat taquitos (and yes, they were amazing).

If this post seems to have a slower pace compared to those of my previous posts, that’s intentional, because it reflects how I normally prefer to spend the final days of an academic school year once the dust of exams has settled and I finally have the spare time and cognitive capacity to get sentimental. The end of this year was no exception, and it was nice to continue my tradition of slowing down towards the end and savouring the little things that I may have taken for granted throughout the year (such as the food at the Honors Dining Hall!). And for this reason, I have less pictures to share than usual.

Some time later, I decided to go for a stroll through USC’s campus and enjoy the nature and architecture that it offers one last time. I passed by Doheny Memorial Library, which is personally my favourite landmark on campus. I mean look, “USC” is trimmed into the shrubbery! How cool is that?

Things began to get difficult again as the clock crept onwards and it became time to say goodbye to friends. And then to go back to my apartment to pack the last remaining belongings in my room. And then to head to the airport.

USC very generously arranged complimentary shuttle transportation from campus to LAX airport, so my final departure from Troy Hall was about as stress-free as it possibly could have been.

While riding on the motorway towards the airport, I got a final glimpse of Los Angeles — and if I had had a telescope, USC — through the window of the shuttle, against the beautiful backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains and the bright blue sky that they scrape. I like to imagine that the LA smog took an afternoon off so that I could get this last picture.

Check-in and security at the airport were a breeze (they always are at LAX (though their rideshare situation leaves much to be desired)), and before I knew it, I was at my gate.

I’m telling you, especially when you’ve been subconsciously drawing out the move-out process to push off the emotional turmoil that comes with it, it’s always such a relief to finally just sit in your seat on the aeroplane and know that the hard part is over and that you can now physically and mentally relax. All that’s left to do is to reminisce about the good memories and come to terms with the close of this chapter and the opening of the next!

Well, what a year it’s been. I guess this is goodbye, for now.

Thanks for coming along for the ride! I hope that you get to set out on your own sometime soon, and that these posts have helped you to do so. If I could offer just one piece of advice to anyone who may set out on their own USC journey soon, it would be to quickly and completely embrace your newfound Trojan identity — buy the jumpers, go to the games, and flash the trademark hand signal *✌️* whenever and wherever; though it is a foreign concept to exchange students, your university is your identity in America, and you will get the most out of it if you wear it proudly.

Fight On, Trojans!💛❤️