I love the end of finals just as much as the next person, but the bittersweet ending leaves you torn. With another semester down, you can't help but wonder: Where did the time go? Have I learned anything other than A2+B2=C2? Is Bill Nye the Science Guy still alive? Is the mitochondria still the powerhouse of the cell? When did I transition from that little girl who went to the school nurse to get a tooth-shaped necklace for my loose teeth to that girl who has to pretend to be somewhat of an adult?
Freshman year, it seems like centuries away until walking across another graduation stage. Sophomore year, you’re still optimistic that you can go out on a Tuesday night and not consider yourself in need of counseling. By junior year, reality whispers in your ear, “You’re nearing your quarter-life crisis my dear, enjoy it while it lasts.” And senior year, well...
Throughout those four years, you seamlessly fit your whole life into a 15-feet by 11-feet space and called it your home away from home. Your room took you under its wing in September and let you shape your identity with all the posters and pictures you hung on its walls. Your room helped cure your hangover countless Sunday mornings by not judging you for getting out of bed at 2 p.m. Your room was the host of many a pregame and you knew exactly where group pictures should stand in order to get the best lighting.
Your room was where you could feel ugly in sweatpants, hair-tied, chilling with no makeup on and be confident in that rat’s nest you call your hair. But now it’s May, and your room is back to the same way you found it, empty and resembling a more sanitary jail cell — mainly referring to your bed without sheets on it. But still, on move-out day, saying goodbye to your room seems just as important as saying goodbye to your roommates.
There’s something about looking at those barren walls covered in thumbtack holes and the smell of Lysol disinfecting everything under your bed from the entire semester that triggers all the feels. The walls seem to stare at you while you're standing in your empty room with the rest of your life packed into a gas-efficient sedan.
But who knew these vacant walls would make me so nostalgic? Maybe it’s because I feel like I just got to school two weeks ago and I’m already saying my goodbyes, or maybe finals were just that much more emotionally draining than last year. Either way, the mix of emotions I felt leaving those four walls of my 15-feet by 11-feet abode made me realize I need to retain the little things in life and appreciate their value. Just like food is more enjoyable when you take the time to savor it and not just swallow it without chewing, life takes on the same idea.
If those walls could talk they'd speak of all past shenanigans: the friends, the laughs, the mistakes of all too many drunken nights, or sadly all too sober. My empty walls somehow reminded me that we're not going to be college kids forever, that we’ll eventually take our separate paths with no guarantee of crossing routes along the way.
If they could talk, they would urge us to always be grateful for and act upon opportunities that are given. Because just as a room can go from warm and inviting to vacated and uninspiring on move-out day, opportunities can change to become empty and unfulfilled just the same. If those vacant walls could speak, they would advise us to embrace important moments but never overlook modest ones, as each split second can never be relived or replicated. As you closed your door to your room one last time they would tell you, "Trust me, you'll thank me later."
Because someday we’ll exchange our Vera Bradley backpacks for an overused briefcase we drag to work every day. And someday we won’t be doing our makeup to walk to class, but to walk down the aisle on our wedding day. And it’s kind of sad isn’t it? That life goes by so quickly and sometimes it takes the barren walls and empty closets to remind us to slow down and appreciate these moments.
We can get so distracted by important milestones in life that we become resistant to noticing the small happenings around us. Don't just swallow life's experiences whole. Take full advantage of every moment. Wring out and extract every bit of nourishment from any given circumstance. So that when the time comes to inspect those empty walls and thumbtack holes at the end of a chapter, you feel satisfied and fulfilled. So that you can be surrounded by the vacancy, but still fill the void with the peace of mind that you experienced your chapters wholeheartedly.
