This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Bates chapter.
Dear “You Guys,”
I’m from New England, we don’t say “y’all.” The closest thing we have to the term is “you guys.” Hey, you guys. What are you guys doing tonight? How are you guys doing today? Bye, you guys. My limited knowledge of French tells me that their word for it is “vous.” This is both the formal version of you and the plural, used interchangeably. It’s up your interpretation of the context to figure it out. My middle school French teacher, a tiny wild-haired woman from the south of France, used to write the conjugations on the whiteboard, each with their translations. “Vous” was always written as “yous.” I don’t know if she this was an attempt to create a semi-cognate or a result of English being her second language. Either way, it stuck with me. Hey, yous; you group of people that I care about. Hey, you guys.
This is the point in my college career thus far at which I have become progressively more and more nostalgic. I wouldn’t go as far as to say homesick, just often thinking fondly of the “hometown homies.” So here is a love letter for you guys, for all those I’m currently missing.
I’m just a freshman. I don’t know how I’m going to feel a year from today, let alone later this evening. At this very moment, what I do know is that I am continually struck by the severity of my change in surroundings. It’s been a month and a half now and I’ve mostly assimilated – but what still gets me every time I think about it is that my friends at home are no longer my main friends. You guys are no longer the people I spend most of the year with. This isn’t a summer program, I’m not going home permanently in a few weeks. This is my life for the next four years and I’m slowly coming to understand that still. So even though you all are no longer my main friends, thank you for the time we have spent together.
Remember that morning at the beach?
Remember Halloween junior year?
Remember cape cod?
Remember the night we went stargazing?
How can it be that my entire high school career went by so quickly? I’m terrified that my college career is going to go the same way. I’m terrified that all of a sudden I’m without all the people I’ve known for such a long time, some for as long as I can remember. It’s not a bad kind of terrified though. I think we were all ready to move on with our lives. We’d spent too much time in the town we all grew up in, we’d spent too much time with each other. My point is that it’s fine, it’s normal, it’s good – it’s just strange.
So thank you, you guys. Thank you for being there for me until it was time for all of us to move on, and thank you in advance for being there for me when we all come back eventually. To anyone who gets to be friends with my friends from high school in college, just know that you’re incredibly lucky.
Love,
“Me”