Miss This

You're gonna miss this / You're gonna want this back / You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast / These are some good times / So take a good look around / You may not know it now / But you're gonna miss this ~Trace Adkins - You're Gonna Miss This

I was being sentimental, as I am wont to do, and started browing the SHO TIME 2009 photos on the SHC website. Not only did it bring back fun memories of SHO TIME 2008, during which I acted as both a mentor and an SA, but it also reminded me of my first days of college, when orientation was just orientation and nothing like the spectacle of SHO TIME today. Looking at those pictures of first-years hanging out on the HUB lawn, playing icebreakers, attending Late Night with the Dean, I imagined the years ahead of them, not unlike the years that have just passed for me. Would she become best friends with the girl behind her on the tug-of-war rope? Would he get his first internship from the alum he talked to at a reception? Would they live all four years in Atherton or Simmons? Would they move off-campus with friends they met down the hall that first week?

Cherish this, I wanted to tell them. You'll look back in a few years and wish some parts of college would never end. I wanted to tell them the things I wish someone had told me my first year: You are not your major; if you need help, suck it up and go to office hours, even if your professor scares the crap out of you; you are better than you think you are. I wanted to tell them about fulfillment, about joining organizations that mattered to them, about helping others. I wanted to tell them about the mistakes I made, the things I should have done. I wanted to tell them about my triumphs, the things I celebrated.

A girl I met when she was a first-year and I was an SA called me the other night just to talk, and I felt like she was not following in my footsteps, necessarily, but having a very similar college experience as I did - except that she was realizing much earlier than I had that there is a world out there beyond our engineering majors. And maybe I had something to do with that. We talked about everything from Teach For America to consulting to alternative spring breaks, and it was really satisfying to hear her say that I was someone she looked up to. Because, really, after everything I've done in college, from leadership boards and honors societies to RAing and SAing and back, that's all I ever hoped to be.

But here's the thing: I know that even without my advice, or any advice at all, she and all those new first-years I saw in the pictures will find a way to get through the craziness that is college and the HoCo just like I did and end up where I'll be this Friday: Eisenhower Auditorium, collecting that hard-earned chunk of metal. Who knew half a decade could go by so fast?