No one can mentally prepare you for what it's like to say goodbye to a place that's been your home for two semesters. Suddenly, your friends are no longer 10 steps away from you down the hallway of your dorm. Instead, they're hundreds of miles away from you.

As you experience the last few days of whatever college year you're in, embrace the memories you have had over the past year with your friends. Some of you may be going different ways, and some of you may be seeing each other in the fall. Either way, rejoice in the end of the semester. All your hard work has paid off.

You might be remorseful as you watch your friends leave. I know I was. The experience is like no other, a sad reminder of what you'll be leaving behind. For most of you, your experience will be something like this.

As you look around your college campus, seeing people pack up their cars, ready to go home for the summer, it doesn't hit you that another year of school is over. In the blink of an eye, everything you came to see as your home away from home is vanishing. Slowly, you pack up your room, and it soon feels empty.

You watch your friends pack up before you, and you help them fill their car to the brim, exploding with all the things that once made their room feel so familiar. They tell you not to cry, so you don't. At least, not until after they're gone.

Now it's your turn to leave, and all you can think about is how your room echoes because it's vacant and because the floor isn't made up of carpet. You look at your bare mattress and remember all the laughs you shared with your friends on it. You smile because those memories are something you're going to cherish for the rest of your life.

You nod once to yourself, turn off the light, lock the door, and leave. It may feel like you're leaving part of yourself behind, but remember that there's going to be new good times shared in your old room among generations to come. The place you called home is going to turn into someone else's.

Despite what you might think, it's okay to feel sad. No one expects you to be fine. So cry if you have to, but always remember that the memories you created with your friends will never fade.

For some of you, this is the last time you'll say goodbye to a dorm room or an apartment that's five minutes away from your college campus. For others, it's the first. It never really gets any easier, but instead of saying goodbye, think of it as a see you later. It's been one hell of a ride, but now a new chapter is to begin. And it's going to be just as great as the last.