Now that July is almost over, it's started to hit me that I only have one month left of summer break before I start my last semester of college ever.

From the moment I made the decision to graduate a semester early, I've felt as if my life has gone into overdrive. Suddenly, I've found myself nostalgically reflecting on all aspects of my time at Boston University from attending classes with favorite professors, hiking through Europe during my semester abroad, and of course, spending time with all the incredible friends I've met along the way.

I've even become nostalgic for those not so glamorous staples of collegiate-life that I'll be leaving behind like chugging 4 cups of espresso and staying up till 3 am to finish a 20-page research paper or losing my shoes and sobbing on the sticky floor of a frat house basement...

The old cliché is that the time you spend in college are "the best days of your life," and while I can't say for sure that that's true, my journey through Boston University has certainly given me some of the greatest friendships, lessons and memories of my life so far.

So without further ado...here's a brief retelling of one of my more memorable and embarrassing freshman year experiences that I hope sums up all that bright-eyed undergrad cluelessness:

.....

There’s nothing glamorous about doing jumping jacks in the canned meat aisle of a 24-hour convenience store. The royal blue fabric of my plunging evening dress now matched the blue tinge of my potentially frostbitten bare legs as I flailed next to 30% off stacks of Spam, trying desperately to get warm.

It was after midnight, a month into the most brutal winter in Boston’s history, and yet I’d chosen to copy an outfit from a magazine that was more suited for a Miami pool party than a nor’easter.

Noticing the concerned side glances of the few other customers in the store as I jogged in place and slurped down a boiling cup of 99 cent green tea, I self-consciously hardened my grip on the paper ticket in my shiny red palm that said ‘GLOW BOSTON NIGHT CLUB PREMIER COLLEGE NIGHT.’

“There you are!” a bubbly blonde girl in a similarly cut white dress and pair of black leggings exclaimed as she ran up to me, in the process knocking a thermos of coffee off the counter and onto the floor. As I continued my awkward aerobics routine and my best friend Kaitlin apologetically tried to mop up puddles of espresso with a wad of brown napkins, I could see the poor, goateed cashier at the front deliver an irritated eye roll.

“You girls need to leave in five minutes, got it? Because I got break in five minutes and I’m the only person working,” he grumbled sounding weary but stern.

This definitely wasn’t how I envisioned my spending my night.

A sheltered college freshman from a tiny “middle of nowhere” town, I’d been eagerly anticipating my first experience at a real city dance club all week. Kaitlin and I had spent the evening applying excessive amounts of hairspray and coats of mascara. To complete our girl’s night we played a few classic teen comedies in the background while waiting for our nail polish to dry. I wanted to look perfect. That morning I’d even gotten to the gym’s elliptical machine an hour earlier than usual to try to psych myself up into feeling confident in a crowd of gorgeous partygoers.

“I feel like we’re basically like Lindsay Lohan tonight,” I joked as we exited the dorm.

We arrived at the event by taxi, and the moment I slid out of the toasty back seat of the car, and stepped onto the street I heard a crunch as a chunk of freshly fallen snow wedged it’s way into my golden, open-toed sandals. When Kaitlin had offered me a pair of black sweatpants to slip underneath my dress before we left I’d steadfastly refused.

“They won’t go at all with the vibe of the rest of my outfit,” was how I’d mindlessly waved off her advice, thinking we’d only be outside for ten minutes…maybe fifteen at the most. Besides, I knew a little pain would be worth it if it meant turning heads beneath a glimmering shower of neon strobe lights.

After an hour and a half of standing immobile on the ice-glazed sidewalk outside the nightclub, I was severely regretting that decision. The wind cut like a freshly sharpened kitchen knife into my skin and Kaitlin’s cringing face had blanched a ghostly white. Rather than being pressed against the bodies of enthusiastic ravers grinding to EDM music, the crowd more resembled a group of motherless penguins, congregated together for warmth rather than pleasure. I bit my tongue and tried to ignore the numbness in my legs by replaying music videos in my head and trying to picture myself in the role of the covetable V.I.P. dancers and Hollywood starlets. Still, this time instinct won out over fantasy.

“Sorry, I have to get out of the cold right now, or I honestly think I might die,” I groaned, my words vibrating softly against chattering teeth. Without another word I sprinted across two busy city intersections and into the nearest open storefront. Kaitlin tailed behind me, but after a few minutes of indoor relief we were ushered back outside to battle the elements.

Having shamefully abandoning our catastrophe at the coffee counter, the line we returned to was suddenly much rowdier than when we had left. It rocked forward like a kind of undulating beast, as our impatience continued to grow and the temperatures continued to drop. I craned my head around the clusters of people and saw a 20-something-year-old man with a shiny black clipboard attempting to soothe the mob.

A wave of grumbles flowed back through the crowd from the still barred entryway like one of the games of telephone I used to play at summer camp. When the message finally reached the group of two boys and a girl directly in front of Kaitlin and me, I watched their collective expressions shift from shock to anger and finally to exasperation.

“Un-freakin-believable,” the darker haired of the boys sighed, pressing a mittened hand against his forehead.

“What’d they say?” Kaitlin asked, enthusiastically inviting us into the conversation.

“They’re refusing to let anyone else in because they lost the list and accidentally let too many people inside already. They lost the freakin’ list! Can you believe that?” he shouted.

For a moment I was furious. All that time spent primping, waiting, shivering-not to mention the $20 I’d spent on a ticket- and it had all been for nothing.

The disgruntled line suddenly became hostile with the realization they’d all been ripped off, and people began pounding in unison against the front door of the club chanting, “Let us in! Let us in!” I had a brief vision of my already half-frozen body lying trampled in the snow or getting preserved inside a block of ice for a hundred years like Captain America or Walt Disney’s head.

“Hey, do you guys want to get out of here and split a cab back?” I called over the shouts of the protesters.

Luckily the three other students who had been talking with us went to the same school and were just as eager to get home. The taxi ride was full of thawing limbs and jokes about how we would never be tricked intogoing to another event hosted by that shady company again. The girl, whose name I now knew was Amelia, invited us all back to her place to watch movies, and I realized that there was nothing in the world like mutual embarrassment to instantly bond you to a group of strangers.

I spent the remainder of the night comfortably sprawled across the carpet of my new friend’s dorm room, passing a sleeve of Fudge Covered Oreos back and forth. I laughed as I spilled a handful of chocolate crumbs in my lap and casually brushed them aside. My beloved blue dress remained stain free, as it lay discarded in a ball in the corner of the room, exchanged for a pair of fuzzy thermal pajama pants.

.....

And while I know I will continue to make mistakes and have more moments as I navigate the workforce and the 'real-world' after graduation, it's comforting to know that I've at least come far enough to remember that I've at least come this far...and didn't actually end up dying of hypothermia in a Boston gas station.