Visiting my freshman sister made graduating feel surreal
Even one week before graduation, I still talk about it like it’s light years away when it very much isn’t
I visited my sister who’s a freshman in college two weeks before I graduate and it gave me all the feels.
When my parents told me they were going to visit my sister at college for the weekend and offered to pick me up on the way, I knew it was the perfect opportunity for me to surprise her. She’s about to complete her freshman year at West Virginia and with only two weeks left before I graduate from Penn State, I knew I had to get down there and check it out for myself. After all, I had never been there, and I knew it would only get harder to visit her once I become a “real person” with a “real job.”
After an almost three hour car ride with my parents (full of questions about my ongoing job search and the rapidly approaching “g” word), we reached Morgantown, WV. We pulled up to my sister’s dorm to pick her up to grab a bite to eat, and that’s when it hit me a little bit. My sister lives in a dorm. Holy shit. I hadn’t set foot in a dorm room for three years, which seemed like an eternity ago.
It was in that moment that I got a little bit nostalgic. I thought back to my freshman year, and how excited I was when my family visited. My family visiting meant a trip to the grocery store to get snacks for my dorm, accompanied by a real dinner – not from the dining hall. It meant spending quality time with the people I loved and missed so much while being away from home for the first time in 18 years.
After dinner in downtown Morgantown, I headed back to my sister’s dorm while my parents went to their hotel. I looked around the small but quaint room in somewhat disbelief, even though I had lived in a much smaller room just three years prior. My sister and her roommate’s beds were only a few feet apart with only a mini fridge and a microwave dividing the room in half. I saw their shower caddies and flip flops sitting in their closets, remembering what it was like to share a bathroom with 10+ other girls. I watched as they planned where they would go that night, asking each other what they were going to wear and coordinating accordingly.
I hadn’t reflected much on my freshman year memories in quite a while, but they all came rushing back at once. I thought about all of these seemingly insignificant aspects of my sister’s life and how much I missed them being a part of mine. I never took the time freshman year to look around me and appreciate it all, especially considering how fast it flew by. I knew watching my sister that she wasn’t giving it much thought either, but why would she? She had three years still ahead of her with thousands of memories to be made. I, on the other hand, had a mere two weeks left, which I cringed at the thought of.
We’re all guilty of forgetting that soon the moments we’re living in will become distant memories that we’ll never be able to relive again. In my case, four years have flown by and I hadn’t even really thought about it. I knew it was inevitable… But even one week before graduation, I still talk about it like it’s light years away when it very much isn’t.
So to my sister, and every other freshman or underclassman – cherish every single aspect of every day during your undergraduate experience. No two years will be remotely the same, no matter how certain you are of your major or friends at the time. Things change faster than you could ever imagine, but there’s no reason to worry about what is yet to come. Each year will be more and more amazing, and you will learn so much about yourself along the way.
Unfortunately, in the end, you’ll look back wishing you had appreciated it more when you still had the chance.