There’s a strange thing that happens in the last few weeks of college. You’re moving through the same routines you’ve moved through for four years — the same coffee runs, the same group chats, the same walks across campus — and somewhere underneath all of it, your brain starts whispering, this is the last time. The last study session in this corner of the library. The last late-night drive somewhere stupid. The last Sunday night you’ll all collapse on someone’s couch with takeout because none of you wanted to go home yet.
I don’t think any of us are quite ready for that to be over.
Looking back, the road to this graduation has been a lot longer and a lot less straightforward than the cap and gown make it look. I started out in public school in New York. That was my whole world for a while — the noise, the sidewalks, the kind of childhood where you grew up faster than you needed to. Then my family moved to New Jersey and I got dropped into a Christian school, which felt like landing on a different planet. New uniforms, new rules, new vocabulary. New ideas about who God was, and whether He had anything to do with me. It took a while to adjust, but somewhere in those years, the seeds of everything that came after got planted.
When I chose Liberty, I don’t think I fully understood what I was signing up for. I just knew I wanted somewhere I could keep growing — academically, sure, but more than that, spiritually. And four years later, the version of me that’s about to walk across that stage is almost unrecognizable from the freshman who showed up with a packed-too-tight suitcase and a lot of nerves.
College changed me in the ways everybody warns you about and a lot of the ways nobody mentions. My relationship with Christ went from something I had inherited to something I actually owned. I learned what it meant to lead — to step into rooms and conversations I didn’t feel ready for, and let God meet me there anyway. I changed my major (more than once, if we’re being honest). I worked at coffee shops, learned how to make a latte that didn’t embarrass me, and met some of my favorite people across a counter. I drifted through friend groups, the way most of us do, until I found the one that stuck.
Eight girls.
Eight girls who have been the steady note underneath every single chapter of this. We met as wide-eyed freshmen who barely knew each other’s middle names, and somehow we made it all the way to senior year without losing a single one. We’ve cried in dorm rooms and bathrooms and parking lots. We’ve prayed for each other through everything from breakups to internships to dumb roommate drama. We’ve laughed until we couldn’t breathe at jokes that wouldn’t be funny to anyone else. They’ve seen me at my best and at my absolute worst, and they’re still here, sitting next to me as we count down the days until everything changes.
That’s the part that’s hitting hardest right now. In a few weeks, we’ll all be graduated. We’ll all be working full-time. The group chat will still be there, but the proximity won’t. No more “come over, I’m bored.” No more spontaneous Walmart runs at 11 PM. No more living in each other’s apartments like they’re our own. It’s the right kind of ending — we’re supposed to grow up, supposed to spread out, supposed to step into whatever’s next — but knowing it’s right doesn’t make it not sad.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how all of this fits together. The kid in the New York public school had no idea this was coming. The kid in the New Jersey Christian school couldn’t have pictured it. The freshman who moved into a Liberty dorm with shaky hands didn’t know what God was about to do over the next four years. And honestly, I still don’t fully know what’s next. But I know I’ve been carried this far. I know He’s not done. And I know that whatever I’m walking into, I’m walking into it shaped by a campus, a faith, and a group of friends who became family.
So if you catch me crying at a random Target run this week, that’s why. Four years sounds like a long time when you’re starting them. It sounds like nothing now.
But I wouldn’t trade a single day.