it's time.

I could listen to the song below over and over and over and over again. I remember listening to it on the last day of school one year ago, driving away from campus with my windows rolled down. It's the best kind of song, and one of my newest old favorites.



With the end of this semester though, I feel a little different. This was my last semester at BYU. With only a few online classes left to take, I'll never again step back into the classroom, (at least that's what I'm telling myself for now :). But truthfully, I'll miss school. I feel like BYU was a huge chapter in my life. And it was. A whole five years.

I look back and am surprised at my own experiences; what I learned, and even what I'd do over again. In a very small, small way of saying things: I feel so grateful to have learned so much. It was in my first college writing class that I first read ee Cummings, "not even the rain has such small hands." It was then I knew I loved him. I remember as a sophomore sitting in my first Sociology course realizing how profoundly proud I was of my country, even if my Professor didn't seem to be.

Everything from reading Dante's Divine Comedy to reporting for KBYU Eleven News, it's almost ironic that some of my favorite memories were in some of my most difficult classes. So today I feel like I'm not only taking the past three months with me, but the last five years -- so much stretching and shaping and changing and growing and learning and really, so many wonderful, wonderful things.

I could go on and on about my experience at college; what I would recommend and what I wouldn't. What I'd change and what I'd keep the same. But for now, I just plan on listening to this song once again on my drive home this last day of the semester. I'll forget for just a moment that this chapter is ending.

And then I'll let myself feel really, really grateful.