They say you don’t know you’re in the good old days until you’ve left them. Walking down College Avenue, slightly warm and tipsy, I thought how much I was going to miss these nights. How I wished I could stop and freeze time right at this moment. I stood to appreciate the sight of Old Main. This ageless building with towering columns illuminated at night always made me feel nostalgic. How many other Penn State students had paused and felt this while staring up at Old Main? Hundreds? Thousands?

I gazed and remembered my cousin Nikki telling me four years ago that college would be the best time of my life, and she was right. Now that I only had four months left, it was finally hitting me how I had taken this time for granted, and let it slip away from me. It was a bitter cold night in January, and the last semester of my college career had officially started. Only three weeks in and I had already fallen into my routine of staying out late and crawling into my morning classes a bit hungover. Since my apartment complex was off campus, I would often stand on College Avenue and wait to catch the last bus home. Tonight, it had started to snow, and I shivered in my leather jacket as the cold sobered me up.

Tonight, like most nights, I had spent hopping around from bar to bar with my tight knit group of friends. We were filmies, a nickname for the small crew of film majors in the communications department at Penn State. It made sense that we spent every night together, either in the editing lab or at our favorite bar, Café 210. It’s during those late nights that we bonded over our favorite movies, our writing, our photography, all the things we wanted to create and all the things that brought us here. I still haven’t found a better group of human beings than the ones I met in that stuffy, windowless lab in the Carnegie basement.

It never occurred to me that I would lose touch with any of them, until I stood alone in the snow tonight. Thinking of how we would all be scattered across the country once graduation passed, nearly brought me to tears. Caroline, Adam, Chris, Jacob, Maria, Emily, Megan, Lia, Caleb and Kevin had each taken up a space in my heart along with my professors. Not having them around would leave me lost trying to fill the void.

I pushed those sad thoughts aside when the Catabus arrived. I stepped on and stumbled on my first step. The bus driver rolled her eyes. I wasn’t the first drunken college girl to stagger onto her vehicle, and I wouldn’t be the last. I took a seat, and thought about texting one of the guys I had hooked-up with last semester. I scrolled through my contacts, mentally checking off the ones who had new girlfriends or the ones I didn't share any real connection with.

I stopped on the name of my last fling and started a new message. I didn't know what to say. I promised myself I wouldn't be this girl anymore. Earlier that night, I had dragged my three friends to a house party in hopes that he would make an appearance and want to rekindle whatever fun we had last semester.