If you are anything like me, college has been a firsthand experience of just how fast time will pass you by. You start out your freshman year wandering around campus on the first day of classes with a wide-eyed expression and clammy palms as you enter each new classroom praying to God that you're not gonna be "that person" who has to get up and leave five minutes into the lecture because you realize that you aren't in the right place. Before you know it, after many exams and papers that your first year requires, you're moving out and going home for the summer. How did that even happen?!
A few months pass, and you find yourself standing in front of your super cute room that you've set up for your sophomore year, asking your mom or one of your new roommates to get that perfect picture to share on Instagram of your new "home away from home." You'll finally find your friend group, the people that you make time to see during your breaks between classes and the same people you go to Chili's with every Friday night to share a 2-for-20 deal and laugh about all of the things that happened throughout the week before. You'll blink and after many months of finishing up the remaining chunk of your gen-eds, it'll be summertime again. Something will happen to you over that summer, though. Something you never expected to happen.
You start missing your college friends. You start missing all of those nights where studying for a HUGE exam turned into a trip to Dairy Queen for a blizzard with your study group and bumping your favorite playlist all the way there. You'll even miss all of the times you and your roommates sat down in the living room and had a group panic session about everything that is expected out of you for the semester and then laughing about why in the world we thought no one could ever understand where we're coming from. These things will happen, but then junior year rolls around.
Junior year will arrive faster than you can imagine. Brand new roommates and an even newer apartment await on move in day. The first week of classes rolls through, leaving you feeling slightly overwhelmed but even more excited to finally be getting into your major. Maybe up until this point, you and I have had some similar experiences, but if what I'm about to say next hasn't happened to you yet, then my prayer is that it does and that it happens for you really soon.
Staying up late just a few nights ago in order to get all of my reading that was due the next day completed somehow ended up in a racing heart beat and even a few tears. For the first time since coming to college, I realized just how sweet it is. How many beautiful people I've met on this campus, how many times a professor that intimidated me extended their help and encouragement to me and made me realize that college isn't too much for me to handle, and how many times I've seen the hand of God himself move throughout sweet ole Greenwood. What my heart is leading me to tell you, is that if you have not come to this realization, I am down on my hands and knees praying that you do. Yes, college is tough and many of you already have a countdown app installed on your phone counting down the days until graduation because you just can't wait to see a world where exams and papers are no longer a thing. But what is going to be tougher than the stress of college is waking up in post-grad life wishing we had savored every moment... wishing we had joined that sorority, become a tour guide on campus, gotten an internship, or even just wishing that you had taken the time to get to know the people in your college community so that when life after graduation gets tough, you can still have those special college people to look back and reminisce with. There is still time. Plenty of memories yet to be made. Find your moment to wake up and make your college life the best of your life. If you make this commitment, then hold on because the ride only gets sweeter from here.
