I’ve lost it. That back to school feeling. You know the one you use to get when you bought new crayons and put them in your new backpack. You stopped buying crayons in elementary school, and your backpack is probably still the same one you have had for years, but that back-to-school feeling? Well maybe you lost it between crayons and getting to college, but there is a back-to-college feeling. And that’s what I’ve lost. I even forgot it was already time to go back to class.

College has been a whirlwind: if I haven’t been writing in the library, I’ve been out clubbing on a Wednesday night with my girlfriends. All the memories have blurred together, and entering my senior year, my mind has been crowded with other things like graduating, getting a job and the leaking bathtub in my townhouse. Now that I call Raleigh home, I no longer have that excitement of being back at school, back in Raleigh or here for the first time.

All that changed when I had three customers come into my place of work on Friday night: freshmen. You could spot them a mile away. They had fresh, eager, innocent looks, perhaps with just a little bit of fear and uncertainty. If that didn’t give them away, then the big brass dorm keys around their necks on N.C. State lanyards did. They were out for some coffee, enjoying that one weekend in between home and the madness of classes. It was then I was hit with nostalgia for that feeling.

It’s more than just the new dorm stuff or bringing out the old stuff and packing it up again for another year. It’s the feeling of freedom.

That feeling of pulling into Raleigh with a car crammed full of my belongings and plans to meet up with old friends or to make new ones. The familiar taste of summer: watermelon milkshakes at Cook-Out and having to all pile into a pickup truck to get there. I never used that extra time to buy books or memorize my class schedule, but instead arranged my dorm room with my roommate and headed to Wendy’s with all my suitemates.

The few days before school starts and the few weeks before the semester gets into full swing are the calm before the storm. Sure you can feel the winds starting to blow, and you know it’s coming, but it hasn’t come yet. College is the work hard, play hard philosophy on steroids with little regard for sleep. While I’d recommend trying to find a balance, there are times when you have no choice.

But for now, there is a choice.

You aren’t too late either. School is like an old car that takes time to warm up, so choose to go out on a Wednesday night with your friends. Don’t worry about writing that first paper your assigned three weeks early when you could try out that new restaurant or coffee shop. In the blur of the past few years I only have a few memories and the only ones I have of the library are the Sunday nights I spent in the cafe with friends.

Do you miss that back-to-school feeling? E-mail your comments to [email protected].