Okay, so we all know the routine: You show up and move into the worst building on campus, go to class religiously EVERY day without skipping, and five years later you graduate. (Yes, I said five. Let’s be honest, NOBODY makes it out in four, and if you know someone who actually did, well, they’re a witch.)

Basically, none of that is true except for how long it takes. Whatever. BUT college is this whirlwind of freedom and pseudo-adulthood that allows you to make as many mistakes as you need and still collect that mulligan at the end of the day. It’s quite literally a training course for the big world, and even when you finish, you’re still not ready to grow up.

We all know what it’s like being able to wake up, roll out of bed into the first clean(ish) thing we find on the floor, and trudge to class with a rather large group of shuffling corpses, but what is it about college that makes the experience so unique? What is it that changes when you leave? Why is it that when you’ve moved it back down the mountain, it’s just not the same when you come back to visit? Well, kids, lucky for you, I’m gonna’ tell ya!

Well it sucks. It’s a roller coaster of angst, frustration, anxiety and like six other emotions that don’t quite have names just yet. *BAM* Right in the stomach, all at once. The second you leave campus.

Okay, I’m known for being a bit dramatic, so that’s probably not an accurate statement — but that’s how it feels. Or at least that’s how you’re going to feel when you look back. It’s what happened to me, and I gotta’ tell ya’, it’s rough, homie.

I went to Western Carolina University, a small liberal arts college in the western Appalachian (Appa-LATCH-un. If you pronounce it Appa-LAY-shun, just stop) Mountains of North Carolina. And with a small university comes a close-knit student body. You know everybody, and everybody knows everyone else and their mother. Not literally, but you’ve seen all the faces whether you know the names or not. I was fairly well known on campus. Hell, I basically knew everyone as long as they came through my line at Starbucks. That multiplied exponentially since I was Greek (we don’t quite admit it, but everyone in the Village knows everyone else in the Village, and we all know the Village doesn't know how to keep any darn secrets). Whatever, my point is I had a lot of friends, or at least a lot of acquaintances. I loved walking across campus and getting to have the nine BILLION conversations between my dorm and classroom, and it was nice knowing that I could do that.

I went to visit recently. It was so weird; I felt awkward. I had to leave Western in the fall of 2013 after my grant stopped funding its students, and let me tell ya’, I wasn’t happy about it. I would go up and visit constantly -- see my brothers, my friends, even just take a weekend to escape and be a lazy potato by the fountain and bake to a perfect hue of fire-engine red. See, THAT’S what everyone tells you. That’s the story you get when you have to leave or graduate: “Oh yeah, totes come back and visit! It’ll be just perf!” (I totally wrote that in a valley girl accent while bobbing my head and drinking a pumpkin spice latte. You should probably read it the same way for the correct effect.)

But it’s not that simple. See, you only have a certain amount of time before you go from the "nostalgic alumni" to "that creepy 40-year-old that walks around campus by himself." I think I may have already started flirting with the latter. It’s depressing, really. What they DON’T tell you is how bad it stings when one day you’re walking around your alma mater, and instead of trying to aggressively avoid bumping into someone you know, you’re doing the exact opposite -- you see faces that aren’t there, people you think you know, but not really. That’s when you realize how a place that impacted you in such a significant way has quickly moved on without your existence, and in the grand scheme, you are insignificant; now just an alumni number a donation letter is sent to once a year.

I’ll give you a minute to get out of your feels, but hey, someone had to tell you. It gets even worse when you walk through that part of campus, and it’s filled with memories and laughter and the sudden realization hits you that it's gone That emotion, that feeling and that memory that just coursed through your mind is not happening again.

This hit me when I had my first "alumni visit" with my brothers. It was good and fun, but everyone started talking about the events on campus, who did this, what happened at a party the night before, and their plans for the following day. I wasn’t going to be there for any of that anymore. I wasn’t going to be at Chapter, the campus event at the fountain, the concert coming in the next month. I didn’t get the perks of going to late-night dining with my friends anymore or the joy of getting an email telling me I had a package waiting for me in the mail center.

Every visit afterwards became more and more painful, lonely and awkward. I’d see a face I had class with freshman year, but that’s when I realized: I was trying to relive the experience without being there, and I can’t. I can’t recreate the anxiety of waking up in Reynolds and having six minutes to get dressed, caffeinated and "publicly appearanced" before knees-to-chesting it down to Reid for an 8 a.m. I never made it to. I can never relive the moments of those early morning walks around upper campus when the leaves are changing and the air seems to flow with you. I will never be able to relive the heart attack I had EVERY freaking Sunday trying to make it from Starbucks down to the Village (while changing on the run down) before chapter started at 5 p.m. None of that is replicable, and all I have are the memories to look back at and smile on.

This is what nobody will tell you. This is the crap that no alumni in their right mind wants to face. We loved being in college: The tailgating, the classes (I know, I know), always being down the hall from your closest friends and all of the good crap that make up what it’s like. We miss the freedom to do what we want and when we want to while knowing we can still call home to our parents and beg for money and not be judged. That’s what nobody will tell you. You’re going to go back to visit a couple months after you leave, and after everything has changed so much, you’re going to be left there, grabbing the air to hold on to that eternal feeling of comfort you think you had, and that’s when you’re going to have to boot and rally, pick yourself up and just reminisce over a beer or 12 at No Names with the rest of the 40-year-olds who refuse to leave.

Hail to thee, amiright?