When you’re actually at school, going to classes all day and studying all night, it feels like time is creeping backwards. All you want is for the semester to be over. You want the stress to end and you want to be able to sit in bed watching netflix all day. Not that you don’t do that already, but it’s nice not to have a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you’ve got other things to do.

But then, all of the sudden, after all your complaining about how long the semester is, and how much work you have to do, it’s over. And all the sudden, it feels like no time has passed whatsoever. You pack up your room and uncover all the ideas you had come up with and adventures you had planned hiding under a pile of dirty clothes, and realize you didn’t do even half the things you were planning on doing. You got so wrapped up in wishing for the semester to end that you forgot to actually enjoy the semester.

The worst part, however, about realizing that the semester ended almost as quickly as it began is realizing that you’re going home and leaving all your friends behind. You only get to spend a few short months with these amazing people, and you spent the entire time essentially ignoring how important they are to you.

This year I had two amazing roommates. At the beginning of the year we had so many things planned: going on hikes, roomie dinners, movie nights with popcorn and chocolate, and frozen yogurt runs. Needless to say, we quickly forgot all of our plans as we got wrapped up in work, social drama and other extracurricular commitments.

We all left our room on the same day as well. Two days before it was as if nothing unusual was about to happen. We were all happy in our beds at night, chatting before we went to bed and going about our lives as we had been all year long. It was as if nothing was about to happen. But then, all of the sudden, I was sitting in a practically empty room looking at the blank walls, empty drawers and bare floor. One of my roommates had already left, the other was loading her car, and mine was packed and ready to go.

Four hours later I was back home. I brought all my stuff into my room and threw myself on my bed. I relished in its familiarity and hominess. But something was still missing. It was as if I had left two huge parts of be back in my room at school that had so quickly become home. I had grown to love sharing my room with two of my favorite people. When I went to bed that night it was strange not to hear my roommate snoring and mumbling in her sleep. I even woke up at 8am, before my alarm went off (and I am not, in any way, a morning person - you can ask my roommates) because that’s when my other roommate always got up.

I sit in bed having woken up hours before I was planning, and think about how much I had failed to appreciate the two people I had lived with for an entire year. I realize that I will never again be sharing a room with them. In fact, I’m gonna be in a single for most of the foreseeable future, and as nice as that is in many way, I feel somewhat nostalgic about it. Sitting at home in my childhood bed, all the sudden I wish that the semester had been longer. It would be worth have been worth it no matter how much school work I had.