My last first day of college started off as any other day.

I woke up, stayed in bed twenty minutes past my alarm, forgot to eat breakfast, and left my apartment. My walk to campus was uneventful; the usual morning traffic flooded the street. I walked to and around campus using muscle memory, moving from building to building without any thought.

Around me, there were mostly unfamiliar faces with darting eyes, taking in as much of their surroundings as quickly as possible. Confused freshmen and lost transfer students unassuredly roamed campus.

Reflecting back on my first day of college, I felt the same flustered panic that they were experiencing. I remembered the claustrophobia of walking through more than ten times the amount of students at my high school. I remembered hiding in an empty corner of a building and googling a map of campus, frantically trying to locate my Spanish class before I was late. I remembered shielding myself from the blazing sun by sitting underneath a tree after unwisely arriving to class forty minutes before it started.

But I had quickly found a rhythm in my new daily life, like going coffee before class on Mondays and Wednesdays or sleeping in until noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The school became my sanctuary, a place that felt truly and wholly like mine.

And on my last first day of college, I still felt that same strong connection to my school, but with a newly added touch of sadness. In one year, I won't take a short stroll to class. I won't be welcomed by a flood of fellow students. I won't have the pleasant familiarity of my campus.

I'll be elsewhere, doing who knows what.

On my last first day of college, I was full of nostalgia of my previous three years, of euphoria for being so close to graduating, and of nerves for the future.

Most of all, I wished I could relive my first first day of college all over again so I could appreciate it once more.