Dear GC 226,

What a year it's been. I remember being dropped off here by my family to fend for myself like it was yesterday. It was so hard to imagine this tiny room made for two people being a home for the three girls who miraculously just moved all their stuff in. Honestly, the room looked like the size of a closet when I got here, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to survive a year in this cramped space with too much furniture.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

As I'm finishing my last final exams and getting ready to move everything out, I'm reminiscing on all the best times we've had here.

All of the laughs at stupid jokes, laying on the floor screaming the lyrics to sad songs, the Mirror Pic Mondays, the movie nights, deep talks, and bonding that I got to experience. I made so many friends and had so many good times in this small room I never thought would feel like home. Looking at your walls covered in pictures, the lights strung across your ceiling, by the beds and shelf above the window, the decorations for any and every holiday that decorated every available surface, it makes me sad that I'll never get to live in this room again.

I guess I would really just like to say thank you.

For being a place where my friends and I could talk late into the night, learning more about each other and forming real, close relationships.

For hosting more dance parties (that sometimes resulted in the dreaded knock and sound of "male RA") than I could even count, with people laughing and singing at the tops of their lungs, forgetting all of their anxieties and problems.

For letting us drop sprinkles and icing in the rug while decorating what seemed like endless sugar cookies on the floor around Christmastime. The other day I found one, and I was shocked that it hadn't been dislodged by now.

For dealing with all the hair in the rug. It won't disappear, no matter how many times we vacuum.

For letting us jam 20 people in here, when comfortable capacity can't be more than 7.

For giving us a sink, so we didn't have to wash our hands, faces, oatmeal mugs, or brush our teeth in the hallway bathroom.

This isn't really a thank you, but I think that the flooding incident really made us closer as roommates, so in a way, I guess I'm thankful for that, too.

Thank you for giving me the best freshman year experience and home I could have ever hoped for. If I could live here every year, I would in a heartbeat. We will miss you, but I know there are two new freshmen that need the chance to live here and will appreciate and love this place just as much as we do.

We'll miss you, and you'll never be forgotten. ♡

Love,
The Girls of GC 226 who are not ready to go