There are many occasions that arrive that will ultimately lead one back to the site of their college experience. Things like homecoming, alumni weekend, marriages, and other events of the sort, all tend to have the magnetic effect of drawing erstwhile students back into the fold for entire weekends at a time. These debaucheries reunions often bring out mixed emotions from the participants.
Longing, want, nostalgia, and happiness all tend to conspire together to put thoughts into our heads. Thoughts such as, ‘wouldn’t this be great to come back to, and just live here again?! Why didn’t we just stay.’ These thoughts are natural and organic, yet they give us false hopes and false feelings.
College happens once.
We don’t and we can’t go back to experience it again. Our experiences, while matched with those of countless other 20somethings around the world, are entirely unique to us, and will forever remain that way.
As far as we’re concerned that’s a good thing. We love those memories. The times we had with the friends we now hold so dear, whether separated by 10 feet or 1,000 miles, are frozen in time. In our minds and our hearts; our hard drives and the servers of facebook; these unique and often beautiful (though sometimes embarrassing) memories live on everyday.
As we go back time and again, we are reminded why we went there in the first place. Those were a magical four years, and they built a foundation with which we live the rest of lives. So, while going back to that place would be a permanent solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, we’ll gladly visit once a year, see what’s changed, remember what’s the same, and get just as irresponsibly drunk as we did when we lived there. Thank goodness for memories; they make us only grow fonder, but we certainly are glad to have moved on, those days of partying and friending behind us as we continue to journey through our lives.
Sorry if this came off a bit somber. That certainly wasn’t the intention. We loved, and still do love every minute that we spent at school. We love going back. We love sharing what we had with the people that have come into our lives in the years since we left. It almost makes us feel like proud parents. We had a blast this weekend, and can’t wait for the next road trip. Cheers.