It’s a new school year at Cal State Northridge. The streets of Lassen, Nordhoff and Reseda are flooded with college students from all over. And you can tell because it takes you 10 minutes longer to get from one place to another now that the population practically doubled itself. While it’s all good to be back with friends at school, it’s bittersweet for others.

For some of us, it’s our very last year of undergraduate college. It sounds mediocre, but it means a lot more. It means this time next year (if all goes well with academics), I won’t be coming to campus hours before my first class just to find parking. I won’t be buying a ridiculously priced parking permit. I won’t be in the long line at the bookstore buying textbooks. I won’t be at sorority meetings anymore. College parties and shenanigans will be a thing of the past. My youth and young adulthood will be gone. And our place as seniors and students who came in four years ago will be replaced with new freshmen. We will merely be just another college student.

I will be irrelevant to everything college life had to offer. I will be out in the real world with an actual legit income (if I get a job). I will be filling out incredibly adult government paperwork. I will be doing all sorts of adult things.

Three years ago, during my first week of freshmen year, I didn’t think the year could go any slower. I had a feeling I wanted to transfer my third year, but sometime in between I fell in love with this college thing. From all-nighters in the library during finals with other Greeks to taking a break from class to go on adventures around LA, there was just something charming about college. More and more, I learned about my school and I never felt so honored to see this school progress into what it is now.

Freshmen year, I never imagined what it would be like to be a senior in college, but I’ve never felt so sentimental. I take every class as a blessing. I love the fact that I have to spend 30 minutes looking for parking. Because honestly, when I’m 80 and I think of college, I know I’ll laugh at all the times I almost got a parking spot only for someone else to swoop in and take it. I’m going to miss everything about college, even the tests I failed because I deserved it and the daily free 20 pages to print at the computer lab.

Until May, you can find me strolling around campus, enjoying my campus, my colleagues and smiling at everyone I pass by. I promise to make this last year a good one.