The Middle

I walked across front campus this year, across the frozen dirt and mud a thought occurred to me: For more than half of the school year, front campus cannot be walked on. Either fenced off to protect the new seedlings, completely muddy, or otherwise covered in frozen ice.

If you're taking a summer semester, that is probably the only time when you're fully able to walk across front campus.

Then a new thought hit me, this would not be something I would have to deal with in a year's time. In about 7 months, I will be done my undergraduate career. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with nostalgic feelings of my past four years here.

And I was hit with that feeling all adults feel, one almost cliché. I felt this saddened feeling that the possibly the best years of my life are coming to an end. Despite all the debts, the disappointment with grades and tests, from here on, nothing will ever be truly like these past four years, let alone the past 21 that I've lived.

Then I recalled myself, four years ago, in August. Walking around the campus, trying to learn my way around it. An ambitious 18 year old, in fact an 18 year old who had just one month prior had been 17 years old, living at home, with few responsibilities or cares in the world.

And now suddenly, I was facing the world.  

Many of the friends I made in these past 4 years have either graduated, changed schools, some will take a victory lap, and others are only in their 3rd year.

It's a bizarre feeling that I will be graduating more or less alone. There are very few people around who will be graduating with me. When I started, I left all my high school friends, moved to the other side of the country and started this thing on my own.

So, in a weird but fitting way, my time at university is sandwiched with the same feelings of ambition, excitement, and sense of being alone. I wasn't alone, of course - there were many great friends I made in the middle. The middle was great.