"Move in day." The glorious words that hold so much emotion for every college bound high school graduate out there. There are a variety of emotions associated with this phrase. There is the feeling of excitement for this new adventure and chapter of our lives. There is the feeling of anxiety over moving out and starting a life away from everything we have known to be familiar for the past 18 years. Move in day is not here yet, but it is less than a month away, and that right there makes me want to both jump for joy and crawl in a corner and cry. Why are there so many mixed emotions when someone brings up the fact that in less than 30 days, whether we are moving an hour away or 40 hours away (shout out to my other out-of-staters!), we are moving out of the place we have all called home for so long. Well, that's just it. That is the root of all of these mixed emotions. Whether you have the most independent, adventurous bone in your body or you still get emotional when you see a mama duck reunite with her babies, move in day is still an all new experience for you, and with less than a month until the day is here, all of us freshman college bound students are on a roller coaster of emotions.

But I don’t need to explain all these emotions that I am feeling to you; you are already experiencing them yourself, and me explaining to you why I need a shoulder to cry on helps absolutely no one. What I would like to do is give you some advice:

Most of us only have three to four weeks left until we leave for school. If that does not sound scary enough, that also means we only have three to four more Sunday morning church services with the pastor who has watched us grow up, or only three to four more crazy Saturday nights with our friends from high school. Read that last sentence again. I mean it, actually do it. Did you do it? Seriously, go back and reread it. Okay, since most of you won’t actually go back and reread it, let me just say it again for you in a different way. We do not have much time left at home and these last few weeks will probably be the busiest. Between doing all the dorm room shopping that you had procrastinated with doing all summer, to finally pulling out the big suitcase and packing what seems like your whole life into a few bags, these last few weeks have the potential to be the craziest. You might barely have time to drive to the beach with your friends, let alone spend time with your family. To some it might sound crazy, and to others it might sound like I am preaching to the choir, but you WILL miss your family. You will miss your younger siblings annoying remarks when they whine at you for eating the last chocolate pudding. You will miss your mom nagging you to clean your room up because she has company coming over. You will miss the sound of your dad waking you up because he accidentally let the door slam as he left early in the morning for work. You will miss all of these annoyances because you will no longer be there for them to annoy you.

So as the final countdown to move in day approaches, make each last moment special. Make even the annoying moments special because soon enough, they won’t be happening anymore. These last few weeks will go by in a blink of an eye, and I don’t want to miss a single moment.