I woke up to a shrill, familiar noise on my tenth birthday. I had heard it in airports and movie theaters, restaurants, and even once or twice in a classroom.

It was my cell phone ringing. My own cell phone. My brand new cell phone, the one I had been begging my parents for for months. It was a cheap, shiny little black chunk of plastic, and it was mine. Now I could finally call my four friends and 18 aunts (#MexicanProbs) anytime I wanted.

After thanking my parents and eating three slices of cake, I had a difficult choice to make: what would be my first ringtone? I needed something that represented who I was at the time. I was young, I was wild, I was finally ten.

"Don't Phunk With My Heart"? Nah, too "dancey".

"Candy Shop"? I wasn't that risqué yet.

"Boulevard of Broken Dreams"? I wasn't a jaded, angsty teen.

Then I saw it. It was perfect. It captured my essence in every note, in every nuanced lyric. My hopes, my dreams, everything that I believed in as a person, it was all interwoven in this one song.

Weezer's "Beverly Hills".

Iwanted to live a life like that. I wanted to live just like a king. The thought of having my picture taken by the pool (with my new flip phone) made me feel like a celebrity. I had grand visions of being in public when my phone would ring, letting everyone around me know that I was going to be somebody.

Now, a decade later, I still suffer from megalomania, but I'm tactful enough to not try and make my ringtone reflect that. Instead, I let my ego speak for itself. But on October 6th, Kanye West and Weezer took me back to 2005 with their collaborative mixtape "Yeezer."

Part of me believes that Kanye created the mixtape solely to use that one (awful) pun, but all of me is appreciative of this audible miracle. Ye's classic lyrics (along with some new ones) transplanted over the timeless music of Weezer is everything I've wanted for the last ten years, and it took this mixtape to make me realize that.

As any college student can (and probably will) tell you, we are stuck in this weird limbo of life. Not quite adults, definitely not children, partially nostalgic, partially hopeful. "Yeezer" symbolizes all of these feelings. This album not only conjures up seemingly-distant memories of childhood, but, over the course of ten songs, reassures any listener of my age group that there is hope for the future. It isn't 2005 (thank God), and Gold Digger isn't all over every radio station anymore, but if these songs, these tired anthems of our youth can manage to grow and adapt and still make me bump'n'grind ten years later (maybe I was a risqué child...), I know I'll be just fine.

Kanye, Weezer, thank you. Thank you for providing the soundtrack for my childhood, thank you for perfectly blending your hit songs in this surprisingly good mixtape, and, coming from a broke-as-a-joke college student, thank you for this (FREE, y'all!) album.

If anyone needs me, I'll be listening to "The Buddy Holly Workout Plan" and laughing about a time in my life when I wore Hollister and stunna shades.