Finally, the end of the semester. No more tests, no more exams. No more late nights sitting in the library repeating information over and over again in the hopes that you will absorb at least half of it.
It’s done. You’re done.
You’re done sitting in lectures, you’re done working in labs, you’re done living in a dorm, you’re done eating dining hall food and you’re excited! You have this whole summer of unexplored opportunity waiting to be had. It will be a summer of sun and laughs, family and old friends. You can’t wait to leave, eat a real meal, destress and unwind.
That first night comes and you lay in a much comfier bed planning to get the best sleep you’ve had in a while. But it doesn’t come. It doesn’t come because there’s no noise coming from the hallway, there’s no light underneath the door, there’s no sirens outside your window, there’s no one sleeping in bed next to yours.
You find yourself yearning for the cinderblock walls that always kept the room cold enough for you to snuggle under the covers and never get too warm. You now shove the covers off as the heat festers. Why is this happening you ask yourself? Why can I not sleep? The answer is simple, and over the next week, you begin to realize that you miss it. You miss it all.
You miss your friends. Those who were a hundred footsteps away from you are now hundreds of miles. You call them and you text them but it’s not the same. You miss your freedom. You thought summer would be freeing because there were no exams, tests, or projects, but those are all replaced by work or internships, and duties that make it hard for your free time to truly be your own. You miss your college town where 90% of the population is similar to you in age. And you miss your roommates. Those people you saw on a regular basis, slept with in the same room and shared a home. The feeling overwhelms you, you miss college.
You try to convince yourself that it is a phase, that it will pass. But it doesn’t. You bide your time with your family who have missed you so much, your friends who you haven’t seen in forever, your summer job and your vacation days, all the while waiting to return.
So here’s to you, end of semester. I am glad you’re over. I am glad I get a break from the stress of school and the separation from my family that I miss so dearly, but you too will be missed.
Goodbye semester. I will miss you every day we are apart, and I anxiously wait for the roller coaster that you will put me through in three short months.
