During my final visit to my now dearly beloved college, I remember the former student body President reading us the words of a former student comparing St. Lawrence to Hogwarts in how magical the campus feels as soon as you set foot on it.

"That's it," I thought to myself, "that's the feeling." That same day I told my mother to get the checkbook from the car as I formally enrolled as a student at St. Lawrence. I remember hugging my teary-eyed mother before we got back in the car and her telling me how happy she was that her home was mine now too.

My mother graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1985, and 30 years later I became a "chip" as they call it here, meaning the son or daughter of an alumni. Believe it or not, I am not the only one in my class, in fact about half of us are. And while not everyone on campus is a chip, almost everyone knows someone that went here before them whether it be a sibling, an uncle or aunt, a grandparent, or a friend of a friend and all of those people have something in common: they all loved SLU.

And while enormous school pride might seem like common sense to people who go to larger schools with 10,000 in a class and D1 college athletics, for a small liberal arts school in Canton, NY the amount of pride and excitement about SLU is something completely unique.

Anywhere you go, if you are wearing SLU apparel it is a guarantee that a random stranger will stop to tell you about their friend's cousin's older brother went there and absolutely loved it. Even though the class sizes are extremely small compared to some other schools (mine being the largest at around 680) our alumni community is just as excited about St. Lawrence as the current students. Any alumni will stop to talk to you about their experiences on campus or at the Tick-Tock.

There is something special about this school that keeps people coming back to it. There are people in my class who have had over twenty family members attend the school or are 7th generation Laurentians. We aren't a big name school and chances are if you aren't from the Northeast, you haven't heard of us and even then there's still a chance you have no idea where we are, which is understandable.

St. Lawrence is located in a very small community in Northern New York, only about 30 minutes from the Canadian border. The closest major city to us is Ottawa, Canada and in the winters the wind chill can reach as low as -40.

So why would people come back? In this new age of being connected to everyone all the time and most people wanting to live in a city, how does a tiny school in New York have people coming back?

It is because, for many Laurentians, they can't imagine themselves anywhere else. There is a feeling you get when you walk onto our beautiful brick walkways lined with trees (one for every student) that turn the most beautiful colors in the fall. And while we are small, St. Lawrence has something to offer almost every person from our amazing Business and English departments to our world-renowned research labs and study abroad programs.

There is always something to do on campus and you have to try really hard to not get involved in at least some club or organization because once you are in one, you get drawn into about four others. We are all about our hockey team and our rivalry with Clarkson, the Java Barn or the Ticker, and late night Sergi's pizza rolls.

The friends you make at St. Lawrence are unlike any other friends you will have in your lifetime because you have the most incredible thing in common with them: you went to SLU and the experiences you have together are indescribable.

I know that current and former Laurentians will agree with me, that SLU is like magic. The people, the places, and the things you do and see are spectacular. In the short time, I have spent here, I know I have made friends and memories that will last a lifetime and I am forever grateful that my mom signed that check on that day in April. I am so happy to say that I am a Laurentian for life.