it's over

Its over. Four of the best years of our lives. Lifelong friends and unforgettable memories. Each year was its own adventure in a book that cannot be rewritten.

We survived the disappointing meal plans and dirty dishes. We walked alone at night, expecting the worst as we turned down dimly-lit streets. We defied the crossing signals, and stood without worry in the middle of busy streets. We broke rules just to break them. We sat sober while others sipped SoCo. We puffed poison in the darkness, underneath that warehouse window where city lights flickered in the distance. We packed small sedans on trips to Saad's, just to satisfy the weekly -itis.

We took bullshit courses that taught us the art of bullshitting nonsense for extended lengths of double spaced diction. There were classes that changed the way we thought and classes that changed our dreams. We disguised our artistic doodles with pointless class notes, as our eyes stole glances at cell phones and slow-moving minute hands.

The settings would change from block to block. We lived on campus and also in the neighborhood. We sat on stoops and slouched on sofas, pushing off school work until the very last moment. We learned that mistakes could be made, but we continued to make them.

In our first year, we met our best friends without even realizing. In our second year, we learned who was real and how to cook. In our third year, we pushed our boundaries further than ever imagined, and then began looking forward to the future in our fourth.

The characters that stayed close will hopefully always remain, even as this book comes to an end. They each have their own chapters, with their own stories to tell. There was a revolving door for some. We lost contact with a few close friends; some had left and some simply fell off the map. We always saw familiar faces in between classes: faces that we may never see ever again.

We were here when Philly finally won, although some of us were not fans. We were here when change took over our nation. We were here for basketball madness each Spring. We were here for the annual auto shows and monthly police shootings. We were here when those blizzards hit, introducing the idea of peace to a city that never knew it.