“Is this what cramming looks like?” I heard a voice say in my direction as I huddled over my massive pile of statistics notes. My gaze was met by the grinning one of a dining hall worker who was on his way out for the night, clearly amused by my miserable stance.

“It’s been years since I’ve gone through that myself,” he continued, still grinning. “Just remember: you have three months after this! Three months to relax.”

Three months to relax. I repeat this over and over again, convinced that will each repetition it will feel more true. Three months to relax.

Three months to relax but strangely, I’ll miss it here, even in the midst of all this stress.

It seems like yesterday I was a freshman-to-be with her stomach in knots at the thought of living with three strange girls, in a strange place, at a strange time in her life.

Now it seems strange not to do that.

This year I lived with seven other girls. Yes, that’s one apartment with eight people. It’s not as awful as it sounds, though it is as crazy as it sounds.

Through layout meddling and amateur interior design, four bedrooms occupied by furniture too large became little homes for each of us. My bed is cornered by the wall and my dresser, making it a cozy little hideout. There’s a floor lamp crammed into the room where my bed meets the doorway, and whenever Eliana comes in she playfully bends its flexible post. There’s no overhead lighting which was irritable at first, but was remedied with the installation of Christmas lights that haven’t stopped dazzling the room since.

As eight American college-age girls are usually the proud owners of lots and lots of stuff, you can imagine our apartment, during these past 8 months or so, has accumulated a lot of stuff. Hairdryers. Posters. Polaroid photos. Books like “Unicorns are Jerks.” Miscellaneous objects in such large quantities that we’ve made our own Lost and Found. We have lots of stuff, stuff that looks like it belongs to the apartment in the way it’s scattered around, filling every nook and cranny where stuff can sit.

The stuff is ours, but the apartment isn’t.

Next year, someone else’s hairdryers and posters and photos and miscellaneous objects will occupy this apartment’s nooks and crannies. Someone else will be pissed there’s no overhead lighting and someone else will meddle with the layout, pretending they’re interior designers.

It’s a four-year cycle that feels incredibly too hard to keep up with. When I entered the apartment the first day this year, it was totally empty. We filled it; we brought it to life. Now after a year of movie nights, spills, “randos" sleeping on the couch, additions to our “gallery,” and baking snickerdoodles at parties, it has just started to feel like home.

This apartment’s another year, another year that has came and gone too fast yet also has been filled so abundantly.

I look forward to my three months to relax. But I’ll sure as hell miss the craziness that was this year in 101 East, my home.