People always say that time flies, but really, it's more like time disappears. I ran into a friend the other day (who I hadn't seen in a year since I was studying abroad) and he described the passing of time in a unique, subjective way. He said, "thinking back to when I last saw you at the end of sophomore year, now that I see you again, I feel like we're still sophomores. Can you believe that we're seniors already?"

Truthfully, I am still wrapping my mind around the fact that it's going to be my last year at Davidson. It feels like it was only this morning when I flew to Charlotte from Beijing and my American host family drove me to campus to meet the then International Student Advisor, Jennifer Glass. I can still feel the fear I had of starting college - what if I wouldn't like the red brick buildings? What if I wouldn't make any friends? What if my professors weren't friendly and patient? Looking back, these were all valid fears, but they are all gone now. I can't quite pinpoint the moment that I fell in love with all the red buildings intertwined with green nature on campus, the moment I could no longer count on my fingers the number of friends I had, and the moment I realized that professors were actually just grown-up, more-experienced students.

As a 17-year-old freshly out of high school, I thought college would be four long years of hard work. As it turns out, it was more like a few minutes of hardcore fun. People talk about how you don't realize how fast good times are going by and how you take many things in life for granted. Somehow, I never thought that college could be so good and carefree that it would only feel like a blink of an eye.

Now that I have to think about my future, job searching, providing for myself and so on, I'm starting to regret not grasping even tighter onto those moments when everything was so easy and fun. But I guess that's what makes life's good moments so enjoyable - the fact that you don't have to be holding onto anything, that you can just let go and live in the moment and all will be well.

To the new freshies at Davidson, I hope you will have your own life-changing four years at Davidson. To my fellow seniors, here's to more amazing adventures to come.