- Going home has started to feel different than it did in August.
While your hometown used to feel like your default setting, you’ve now been away long enough that it feels just as natural to come back to campus as it does to go home. It’s a strange shift, but a welcome one.
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- Hearing people talk about “next year”.
They are odd words to hear. Wait, what do you mean we’re starting over? A part of you somewhat thought this was forever.
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- Having to think about classes for next semester.
Didn’t we JUST start our second semester? Some of us still feel weird about the fact that we’re being trusted to pick our own classes now. Now we’re being trusted to do it AGAIN?
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- “Fall” now means something completely different.
Last summer, the approach of fall meant the start of an new life chapter. It meant the start of a new school, a new town and an entirely new experience. Now, August 2018 will mean returning to something that’s now familiar, but it’s also a new beginning in itself.
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- Seeing other people graduate…and remembering that people actually do that.
It’s so jarring to realize that one day, that will be you. It’s hard to imagine, but seeing other people go through it reminds all of us just how fast these four years go by… and then realizing how quickly you’ll have to become an adult. It seems so far away, but is it really?
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- Realizing there’s only one more break before the school year is over.
The next time we leave here after March, we’ll be taking all of our things with us. We will have completed an entire year of college. Remember when that seemed unimaginable? Remember when the days between now and summer didn’t seem countable?
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- Thinking about living somewhere else that isn’t your dorm room.
Love it or hate it, the dorm you’ve called home since August has become part of the package deal. You associate the word “college” with that room, and in a matter of months, you won’t anymore. How surreal is that?
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- Looking back at how much has changed.
Think about how many places were unfamiliar to you up until this point. Think about all the new names you’ve learned, all the new faces you recognize now. Cheesy as it sounds, we’re different people now.
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- Losing the feeling of sticking out like a sore thumb.
Remember the first day, when you could walk through campus and FEEL everyone noticing that you were a freshman, even though there’s no way they possibly could? Now tour groups walk by, and you feel like the big attraction they came to see. Yes, it’s me, a college student, I belong here.
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- Being excited for what’s to come.
Because as much as this one year has given us so far, there is so much more on the way. I don’t know about you, but I’m super pumped to see what that entails.
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