I started my umpteenth Gilmore Girls rewatch back in the spring, and now I'm finally nearing the end just in time for the reboot to start. As I'm hitting episodes from season 6 I haven't seen in years, I've started to remember my first impressions of the show.

It was one of those things you hate for no reason or refuse to watch just because people have told you, you should. Specifically, people was my best friend. Finally, on a Tuesday afternoon in the fall of fifth grade (yeah, I remember things), when Gilmore Girls had just recently gone off the air, she convinced me to start watching the first season.

After three episodes, that was it. I borrowed the clunky burnt orange DVD set, took it home and watched the whole thing with my little sister. My mom joined in about halfway through the first season. For the next six months or so, we watched an episode every night, almost without exception. Nobody that I knew was all that into Gilmore Girls, so it was like a secret language only the three of us spoke. We shared it; it was our thing. Still is. To this day, the best Hanukkah present I've ever bought my mother is the first season of Gilmore Girls on DVD. I spent $50 on it, my entire birthday gift card. Pretty soon we had acquired all seven seasons on DVD. Once we had burned through them, we watched them again. And again. And a bunch more times. Come to think of it, I can think of very few times in my life when at least my sister and I weren't rewatching Gilmore Girls!

I'd never watched a whole TV show before; in fact, because we didn't really watch it or have an accessible and working TV, my only TV experiences were from DisneyChannel.com and whichever friends I could mooch off. I had never experienced a really good show. I'd never been invested in characters. Although even then I knew I wanted to be an actor, I'd never really been exposed to good acting. Watching Lauren Graham was like a master class I wasn't even aware I was attending. Upon rewatch I am so impressed by how she handles the crazy dialogue, making it look natural and in character.

Another thing Gilmore Girls acquainted me with is cultural literacy. I grew up pretty sheltered from pop culture and watching Gilmore Girls gave me a broader idea of everything that was out in the world. Every time I go back and watch it again, I understand a few more of the references. There's no better way to gauge how you've changed than watching something your younger self-didn't get and understanding it! Sometimes I can hear myself speaking like Lorelai Gilmore, throwing in a bunch of unnecessary cultural references and inside jokes with myself, not even caring whether the person I'm speaking to understands. In that way, Gilmore Girls taught me to put less value in what other people think of me and express myself in my own way. Lorelei's best and worst quality is selfishness, and on both ends, there are lessons to be learned from that.

Gilmore Girls not only provided years of entertainment for my family and me, but also shaped my personality and the way I think about the world. I can't believe there are only a few more days until the revival!