Summer is winding down. Tans are fading. Water parks, pools, and amusement parks are all closing down for the season. School supplies are stuffing the shelves in stores. It's time for the next year of classes to begin!

We all dreaded August in high school. August signified the ending of Summer and that meant that school was starting soon. Waking up early everyday. Riding the stinky bus to school. Eight classes a day, everyday with no naps, no breaks, and riding the bus home after the day ended. Back to school has an entirely different connotation when you are in college. As a college student, realizing that it is almost time for classes to start again is one of the most exciting feelings (we've all been counting down the day)!

I've missed college! I missed living next door to all of my best friends. We've all been extremely busy over the summer. Everyone goes their separate ways for awhile; Working, traveling, studying. College is awesome when your best friends live right down the hall from you instead of hours and states away. It's difficult to make plans and hangout when everyone has a life with responsibilities, a job, and family that you are trying to spend as much time with as you can before you have to pack up all of your stuff and move it from your bedroom to your dorm room. Classes starting again means that texts and phone calls no become lunch dates and study sessions with the people you've been missing for the last three months.

Being back on campus is just exhilarating. Nothing can quite match or capture the atmosphere of an active college campus during the school year. If you have ever been to a college campus during the summer after classes have all ended and everyone has gone home, it has the resemblance of a barren wasteland. There is usually no one on site and there's a lot of construction workers updating building or making repairs and groundskeepers that no one notices during the year replanting all the flowers. It's a peaceful break from the noisy dining halls and crowded sidewalks, but being around your fellow peers can be fun. You can't people watch quite the same anywhere else. There is such diversity in a college campus that isn't attained elsewhere.

I'm also excited for the actual education aspect of school to start again. I love learning! College classes are nothing like high school. Yeah, they are rigorous and stressful, but they are also interesting! Apart from your general studies that everyone experiences, your major specific courses are interesting and engaging. That's why you are in college anyway, to pursue an education in something you are passionate about in order to obtain a career in it. They are by no means easy, but anything worth having won't be attained without challenges. I cannot wait to get back into learning more about my field and getting one step closer to my career path.

Having the break from the constant hustle and bustle of college is nice every once in awhile, but after some time away you begin to have a longing for it. It's a funny thing in college, because when you are struggling during the semester and stressing about the upcoming exam the only thing that seems to help get you through is a countdown until the next break. Then, when you have turned in your last final of the spring semester, packed up all of your belongings to move out, and returned your room key, the excitement of summer is there... At least for the first couple of weeks until you have binge watched every season of Grey's Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, and Friends then you are bored out of your mind and start counting down the days until you move back into your dorm room on campus. Of course everyone is going to complain countless times about their awful professors, tedious assignments, and grueling papers that have to be written, but after they are all completed and you are able to grab some food with your friends it doesn't seem all that bad. It'll be here before you realize. I can't wait to be back at college!