It’s time for me to leave this place.
All of the clubs I’m a part of are holding their last meetings, and this will be my last piece for The Daily Tar Heel, the group that I dedicated myself to for the past four years. I’m a senior, after all, and the end of the semester is upon us.
It’s a little strange that we call fourth-years seniors. It lends itself to a type of melodrama where 22-year-olds prance about as the venerated elders of an ever-changing community.
It’s easily laughable — I say as an eager participant who spent the past year telling younger friends about how things used to be in the days of old.
And don’t think for a second that I won’t participate in the most morbid senior tradition of all — to look back, as if I am an old man, and reflect on a life here that lasted just four short years.
What is there to be said? I loved my time here. Not everything was good, but I will remember my time fondly.
I’ll remember hearing birdsongs in the morning at the end of an all-nighter that I may have resorted to with a bit too much eagerness, and I’ll remember cursing as I saw the sun peek through the blinds.
Any time I have a burger I’ll think of Buns, and I’m certain no faux-Mexican meal will beat the Qdoba nachos I had at 2 a.m. on LDOC during my first year here.
And from that first year I’ll remember what it was like learning how to pace my drinking, and the ... mistakes I made along the way. I’ll remember the night during the first or second week when I called home, crying, just wondering if I’d ever feel like I could fit in or feel okay here.
