Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to go home. I miss my friends that I haven't seen in five months, my family and the little idiosyncrasies about my town that nothing can replace. There's nothing that can compare to the late night drives to the diner or the road trips to the beach. There are so many things to be excited about that I have missed since last August, but there are also so many things about my last year of college that I can't wait to have back.
What I'll miss is pretty much what you'd expect. I'm going to miss my friends and my dorm room, not as much my classes, but more the lessons I have learned and, most importantly, the overall experience of college. Everyone views college differently. Some view it as solely an escape from their parents, or a chance to test all of their limits, or an opportunity to network and get a job in four years. Honestly, college is a combination of all of these things and so much more. It's impossible to describe what your experience will be like because it's different for everyone. My college experience has been indescribable, which is why it's so hard to describe the feeling I have when I realize the first quarter of it is coming to an end.
I can no longer be my own rule-maker. I can't stay up all hours of the night talking with my roommate about the guy we've been watching around campus, how we need to get our lives together or what we're going to do this weekend (even if it's Tuesday). I've gone from struggling to figure out how I'm going to share a 15 x 11 room to being unable to imagine what it's like to wake up and not have someone ten feet away from me. It's back to my own room, texting my friends about my late night thoughts, no matter how pointless they are.
It's going to be strange not being able to reach under my bed to grab a water. Living in a dorm, there isn't much room for wasted space. While this may seem annoying, it's more convenient than you think. Your floor becomes the kitchen table, your desk (at least in my case) starts to resemble that one table in your house that is an organized mess, your three-foot fridge starts to look like an entire grocery store and your closet shelves are as organized as the container store. It doesn't sound ideal, but it's good enough to miss.
While it seems like I don't want this year to be over, which I don't, I also can't wait to go home. I'm excited for the sit down meals with my family, the feeling of laying on my couch and mindlessly listening to the TV create background noise (I don't have a TV in my dorm), the feeling of having a car again and, most importantly, my dog's face when I walk through the door.
When I picture sitting around the fire with my friends, not caring about what's going on around us, a smile comes to my face. I know who my true friends are after a full year of being away from them, and I now know how I want to spend my summer. Yes, we will all be working and I'll be preoccupied by responsibilities that don't exist in college, but I'll love it just the same.
I had a lot of expectations when coming to college, but the bittersweet feeling of finishing my first year was not one of them. I am grateful that I've made so many memories that I'm sad to leave behind. It makes me value my time at home, yet makes me happy knowing that I have someplace else I can call home as well.
