College Nostalgia & Corona

Photo Source: Paolo Raeli; Photo Edit: Natalia Rehman

I attended my last in-class lecture a little over a month ago without knowing it. I went out with my friends for the last time as an undergraduate that same week without knowing it.

I was not prepared to leave college three months early without saying proper goodbyes to the friends, places, and memories that made it my home for the last three and a half (ish) years, but here we are, and I am redefining what goodbye means.

Goodbye means learning to let go of things I wasn’t ready to let go of yet.

It means making new plans, ones that don’t look anything like the plans I made originally.

It means remembering every moment fondly.

It means learning to forgive myself for every moment I took for granted when I believed I would have three months to make up for all the things I missed.

It means remembering all that I did not miss, rather than all that I did miss.

Though I will not be able to participate in the annual senior bar crawl or take my last undergraduate final in a classroom, I will hold tight to the memories of every sunset I watched with my friends. I will smile when I think of the time I pulled an all-nighter in the library. I will fondly remember the picnics in the park by campus and my favorite barista at my favorite café.

Goodbye now sounds a lot more like see you later; it sounds a lot more like see you soon. It sounds a lot more like “I’ll be back to visit.” It sounds like “I will be back to eat at my favorite restaurants again and to sit in the grass in the middle of campus.”

Experiencing “lasts” without realizing they were lasts changed my perspective on what that even means. I still love all that I’ve loved about college, and now all my last memories were just sweet, and not bittersweet.

The end of my college experience feels a lot less harsh now that I haven’t done all the things I expected to do in my final months. Without saying formal goodbyes to college, my transition into “the real world” feels a lot blurrier. While my time in college may be without a true final chapter, I will still hold dear every memory and moment that I have already written into the book.

Even without finishing the way I thought I would, I am thankful for every single moment I spent in college. I am thankful for every lesson I learned, every friend I made, every hour I spent writing papers. I am thankful that I got to have the experiences I had.

I have learned that saying goodbye to college means a lot of things, but I think most importantly, goodbye sounds a hell of a lot like thank you, for everything.

By Bella Townsend

UC Berkeley student, poetry enthusiast and firm believer in Taco Tuesday

Photography Edits & Curation by Natalia Rehman