Wait... College is Over?

I am done with college...

Finished with my undergraduate career at UCLA. okay okay graduation is on Friday... but still 

 I turned in my last final paper this morning and assuming I pass (pretty sure I'm gonna be just fine on that one) I will officially be an alumna of this wonderful university I've called my home for the last four years.

Anyone around me for the last few days has heard me proudly boasting that I would officially be finished with college Monday morning when I turned in my last paper. 

Anyone around me for the last few months has heard me say how ready I am to be finished with college and move on to something new and exciting. 

Today, when I handed that paper in and got back to the HOP (the amazing House Of Pi- my true home for the last three years) I suddenly didn't want that to be my last paper ever. I wanted to go back and do these last four years all over again.

Honestly, name another time if your life when you are going to be able to live on your own, in a brand new city, making up the rules as you go along. All while somehow always knowing that if and when you need them your family will be right there. In college you have the opportunity to make new friends, learn a bunch of stuff that you may or may not actually use later in life (still tbd), make lots and lots of mistakes, and do a lot of growing up (but not too much).

Four years ago, before I had even set foot on the UCLA campus to begin my freshman year, a friend told me "Well my dear, you're about to go on a four year adventure to a place where absurd amounts of drinking are encouraged, girls dress like sluts every thursday, and it's a unanimous belief that a morning of awkwardness is always better than a night of loneliness." Crudeness aside and remembering that college is OH SO MUCH MORE than this, it has always made me laugh and I will miss the place where this lifestyle (not saying this was my lifestyle) is somehow socially acceptable.

As high school students we thought we were moving on to the "real world" but oh how wrong we were. College is far from the real world. Realizing that, and recent conversations I've had with my friends who were forced to leave this beautiful world before me, do not make me particularly excited to move on in to the actual real world.

But... it is what it is and ready or not UCLA is kicking us out. All jokes aside, I couldn't be more proud of the person I've become and the people I've become friends with over these past four years. As nerve wracking as it is to move on to a new chapter, I am excited and ready. I think...