As I sit here on my last lunch break of work week, indulging in the most gourmet of meals (a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with forbidden in-house food), I find myself romanticizing about next Sunday.

It’s every girl’s favorite day; more magical than one’s nuptials, more ethereal than the birth of one’s first child, and certainly more memorable than one’s twenty first birthday: Bid Day. Screaming girls, Pinterest ideas and Tumblr outfits around every corner. And as I’m sitting, here, my sandwich gone, I realize that I am no longer a baby. I am in fact, about to have a baby. 

Bā-bee: (noun) member of the youngest pledge class in a sorority; receives more attention than all the rest of the chapter members combined. 

So now let’s look back, at our last moments as babies, and to an even more eventful summer than even Columbia, Missouri could have offered.

1. Everyone learned what a metaphor was thanks to adorable teenage cancer patients who made you bawl your eyes out. Thanks John Green.  

2. After you finally wiped your tear stains from your face, your senses were further assaulted by hit songs that plagued the radio as summer tunes always do. Although I tried to be thorough in my writing, I am still puzzling over why that guy has “gotta be so rude.” 

3. We all know who Kyle Beckermann, Clint Dempsey and DeAndre Yedlin are now. We’re still bitter about the rest of the World Cup.  

4. Kim Kardashian has further expanded her media empire into the realm of mobile gaming, a long way from her humble beginnings in film. I don’t really know how it works, but I hope you’re all A-Listers. 
4b. In other Kardashian news, Kylie Jenner turned 17, reminding us all that we did puberty wrong.  

5. Also, renowned poet, speaker and activist, Maya Angelou passed away this summer. If you haven’t read “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” but you watch all of the Real Housewives, you should check it out because I promise it makes you feel better about being a woman. 

6. Along with the increasing popularity of sorority Tumblrs, society’s demise might also be traced back to some unfortunate events around the world this summer. ISIS (the terrorist organization that even Al Quaeda won’t mess with) has been systematically murdering different ethnic and religious groups throughout Iraq, western Africa is plagued by Ebola where the top two doctors and aid workers in Sierra Leone have already died from the disease, and girls are still missing from their families, kidnapped by the group Boko Haram. Stalin’s Russia has been slapped with (guess what?!) more sanctions, and planes have been falling out of the sty result in a tragic international game of “who stole the cookie from the cookie jar”. Israel and Gaza are firing rockets over each other’s borders, raising the question whether it is more morally acceptable to use one’s own citizens as shields or to know this information and fire on civilians anyway. Western news organizations have taken heat from representing the conflict heavily in favor of Israel, but it’s difficult to determine a good guy/bad guy here.    

My sandwich is long gone at this point and, you, reader, are probably hungry by now if you were so dedicated as to read through this summer recap. So, as Mizzou gears up for lots of news about sorority recruitment and tailgating etiquette, keep in mind that there are bigger things going on around us, and have a great year, Tigers.