“I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”
I can vividly remember my senior year of highschool, my friends and I reading this quote and immediately getting teary-eyed. It summed up about all of our feelings we had about leaving our hometown, and embarking on new journeys. Our time together was coming to an end, and it was starting to hit us that we were all going to separate parts of the country for the next four years.
At the time, I remember I was often emotional about everything coming to an end. There were so many “lasts.” My last highschool soccer game, my last prom, my last math class, and so on. I realized how much that place had made me into the person I was, and how much my high school friends and my hometown really meant to me.
The time came, and we all packed up our belongings to head to our new home for the next four years. It was exciting buying dorm room necessities, hanging up pictures of your friends, meeting your new roommate- and it definitely distracted me from the emotional aspect of it all. So much was changing in so little time, that it was almost hard to think about all of the things and people you left behind.
First semester of college was hard. Adjusting to college life takes time, but once you end up feeling comfortable it starts to feel like home. You start to make new friends that you tell your old ones about, you start to grasp onto the freedom that you never had, and begin to learn things you never knew.
It all happens so fast. I remember moving into the dorms freshman year like it was yesterday, and I’m about to be a senior. As cliche as it sounds, I feel like I blinked and my college life was coming to a close. I’ve grown so much in these four years that I have been at UAB, and I am forever thankful for all of the lifelong friends and memories that I have made. With that being said, the quote my friends and I were once crying over in high school, has never felt more real than it does now.
I am in disbelief knowing that my last semester is coming up in August. I have a hard time even wrapping my head around it all being over. One thing I know for sure, is that I am in the “good ole days” right now, though. Knowing that these are the days I will be missing soon enough, I will be able to cherish every moment this upcoming fall. I feel good knowing I’ll be able to soak it all in.
