There are so many college students across the country that, unfortunately, there are bound to be at least a few who don’t find their dream school right away. There are so many incredible things that you feel when you know you’re in the right place at the right time.

Think about all those memories you made the first few weeks of your freshman year. Everything was new, and you felt unstoppable. That was, until you had your first round of exams. Whether you aced or failed those, you had new friends beside you and you were learning valuable life lessons without even realizing it. Whether you recognized it or not, that was just the beginning of a teachable moment and good times mixed together. College in general is typically called “the best time of your life” for a reason. All the experiences from the beginning of your first year, to the ending of your last year, all tie together and build you into the adult that is ready to face anything.

As young adults who are about to enter into the real world, now is the time to truly “live it up,” and enjoy each minute we are given. While I will admit, these are possibly the most cliché quotations that can be highlighted, they are most definitely the most applicable to our lives at the moment. How lucky are we that we have the opportunity to even go to college?

All those times you went home, whether it was over a weekend or for months at a time for breaks, you couldn’t help but feel like you were missing something. After moving away to college, there is a sense of independence and freedom that you experience that you never really stop feeling after that. Next thing you know, you’ve become comfortable with your school and find yourself calling your college town home even more than the place you grew up.

I hope you have had the blissful experience of walking through campus having the overwhelming sense of belonging wash over you. Whether it’s with music playing through your headphones or just the buzz of students in the background, everything seems to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. You feel like you fit, and you are supposed to be there. You feel unbelievably happy and there’s nowhere else in the world you would rather be in that moment in time. If you have felt this, you know exactly the moment that I am trying to explain. It’s one of those moments that you can never quite capture with words. There is nothing better than that feeling, in my opinion. The first time you experience this, is the true moment that you realize you’ve found the right place for your four years.

I will never be able to thank my school for all the memories it has given to me, as well as the memories that are yet to come. I thank God every day that the chips fell the way they did during my senior year of high school that brought me to make the decision I did. I am constantly full of overflowing love and pride for my university. I truly hope that every college student feels that infinite amount of comfort and happiness at least once in this segment of their life. It doesn’t matter if it takes you one try or four tries to get to the campus that is perfect for you, it just matters that you have this experience that isn’t just said to be “the best time of your life.” It simply is.