You wake up in the morning, and it feels just the same as any other day. You sluggishly get out of bed, run to the bathroom to do your morning routine, throw on some sweatpants, grab your notebooks and walk to class. Except today instead of sitting through lectures, you are taking your final exams or receiving your final grades. You sit and watch the clock tick, wanting to get out of the classroom; you’ve yet to realize that you don’t want to leave just yet.

You get out of class with your friends and make your way to the dining hall. The woman who swipes your card says something along the lines of, “You’re gonna have to cook for yourselves now!” You and your friends laugh and walk in to get your food. You all complain about the terrible stomachaches the cafeteria has given you throughout the first year, and how you’re unsure if you’ll be able to do three more years of it. You spend about an hour together before you realize that you have to go finish packing up your rooms, because of course you’ve waited until the last minute.

Walking back to your room, you start thinking about how you don’t exactly know how the year went by so fast. Yesterday you were sitting in orientation, not knowing a single person. Now, you are waving goodbye to familiar faces as they pack their cars and drive away. “Have a good summer! See you in the fall!” has been said about 300 times today. But still, it hasn’t really hit you yet. Your first year is over, and for the next four months you will not see the people you have seen every day since you’ve moved in.

Suddenly, your day is almost over and you’re standing in the middle of the same empty room as you were about 8 months ago, with boxes and bins stacked next to you. This time around though, it’s different. Instead of looking at these four walls and thinking of the endless possibilities, you’re staring at your home for the last few months and thinking about the memories. The nights where you and your roommates were up talking until 3 am, the time you flooded the bathroom because you didn’t know how to work the shower, the countless times you ordered in food and all sat around the desks. Part of your heart will always lie here, whether you enjoyed living with the people you did or not.

Before you know it, you’re standing in the parking lot with your absolute best friend in the world. Though you’ve only met a few months ago, you start to realize you’re unsure of what life is like without them. Your cars are packed and your families are waiting to take you home, but the two of you needed a minute. You tell each other that you’re going to miss the other, and that your lives would’ve been terrible if you’d never met. You of course mean absolutely every word of this. You promise to visit each other, and there’s not a single doubt in either of your minds that the other one will follow through. Tears escape your eyes as you hug each other. You whisper that you love the other into their shoulder.

You’re pulling away from the school when everything hits you like a wave. For the next couple of months there will be no more noon lunch dates with the girl from your English class, no more calling your best friend at 2 am to walk to your room just to give you a hug, no more parties in the room across campus. You think back on the last few months; where you’ve started and where you are now, and you can’t help but smile. Freshman year was the most incredibly scary but exhilarating time of your life. You think of all the smiles and the laughs, the nights when you cried over something stupid, the all-nighters pulled in the library doing homework, and realize you wouldn’t change a minute of anything. And the best part is, you get to do it all over again for three more years.