"Summer" is a word that has become consistently redefined as I've aged, and a wide range of ideas have come to my mind when hearing the word. From just implying freedom when I was young, to bringing about the anticipation of big plans, to even filling me with dread, summer has been a versatile part of my language with an evolving connotation evoking a different emotion every year, every month, every day.

This summer, I'm approaching my junior year of college and I'm taking this final month as a time to reflect on what the word has meant to me in the past, and what it may mean to me in the future.

I'm sure most of us can remember our early elementary days, with summer starting and ending both being some of the most exciting concepts to a young child. The anticipation in those last few days of celebrating three months without school was an exhilarating feeling completely unmatched in our little minds, and the anticipation of seeing all our friends again and how they'd changed and heard their stories was the only thing that could hope to rival it.

Then middle school came around, we got our first phones, we first learned the early versions of social media, we started keeping in contact with so many of our friends, and summer became even more exciting. The word started eliciting more than just freedom from school, it started to mean the freedom to do things with even more of our friends and to start experiencing things together.

Summer held more opportunities than our grade school selves would have pictured, and coming back to school was made much less exciting.

The high school further changed the landscapes of our lives, as technology and our knowledge of it furthered, and so did our opportunities. We started to find our places, we started to become involved in our things. Whether it was sports, arts, clubs, extracurricular activities, etc. we furthered ourselves and found places and activities to enjoy ourselves within.

Some of us got jobs, most of us got our licenses, we almost all drove a car even if it wasn't ours alone. Summer for some became the off-season and for others became our busiest time yet, and we approached it with a never-before-seen sense of uncertainty, the magic of summer changing into bigger and better things but simultaneously holding the promise of being just as busy as our school days made us, even if we were busy having fun.

The desire to do everything we wanted in a 3-month period while potentially balancing out an activity and/or a job became almost synonymous with the stress of never having time to do it all the other 9 months of the year.

Senior year hit and the realization of both extremes of summer became the greatest we had ever experienced. We realized that we were oh so close to being done with primary education altogether and the mixed feelings within us generated a most bittersweet aura as the anxieties of reaching true adulthood mingled with the adrenaline rush of graduating high school.

The pressures of college readiness, the joyful expectations of a brand new environment, and the media's obsession with high school being "The greatest four years of your life" only furthered this mixture, until the entire high school was dripping with the clashing flavors of the end of our youths.

We graduated and all went on to our different paths. Some had jobs lined up for them already, be it because of hard work and dual credit classes, or because they won the birth lottery and have a stable family business. Some of us decided to work in blue-collar career fields, going to vocational schools or getting on-the-job training to support our infrastructure or our homes or whatever and wherever the wind takes them and their skills.

Others decided to extend their summer and find a simple job for a year or two before deciding their futures. Others still rolled our way into The American Dream and immediately decided to further our educations. No matter where we went after high school, we changed forever, we started living lives that are utterly and completely individualized, and most of us never looked back, we became several "I's" and stopped referring to ourselves as the collective "we" that had clung to us for the past thirteen years.

I, for one, belong to that final group. I decided to come to a university and study a field that I had had my heart set on and my future laid out in front of me in. This did not last. I quickly realized I was not cut out for said field and spent two years trying to just tough it out, before finally finding something better for me.

So here I am, approaching my junior year of college, starting in on a new major with a new passion, and I'm taking this final month of the final summer before the rest of my life, and I'm reflecting on what summer has meant for past versions of me, and what summer will mean for future ones.

For me, this particular summer has meant redefining myself by planning out my new life course, by deciding who and what I want to be when I finish school, and by getting to know who I truly am and what my aspirations are. It has meant shifting myself into a new, more productive, gear by reorganizing my status as a student, by starting my first job ever, and by becoming a member of a wonderful writing team here at The Odyssey.

And finally, it has meant growing as a person more than ever before by trying to experience life in new ways, by channeling myself creatively, and by connecting with new people and reconnecting with family and friends.

As for what summer will become, and what emotional responses the word will evoke as I age, I cannot guess, I can hardly even speculate, but I can and will hope. So I hope that summer will slowly become less and less scary and more and more exciting. I hope that summer will never be mundane, that the concept of summer will never stop being something to look forward to, that summer will never register in my mind as just another season.

I hope that every consecutive summer from here on out will contain the same level of personal growth that the past few have shown me. I hope that summer will bring me the perfect levels of nostalgia so that I never forget where I come from or what it took to get me wherever I end up. I hope that summer's simple charm and peaceful rain, and summer's horrid heat and chaotic travels will always continue to coexist.

I hope that I get to experience many more summers in my lifetime, and I hope that I will never know whether I'm living through my last one.

In short, I hope that summer will remain what summer has always been: beautifully bittersweet.