The urge to write has been somewhat vacant for me the past few weeks. But as the reality of real life is beginning to settle in I am beginning to think about the whole college thing more clearly.

I have said this countless times already but here goes, five years went by more quickly that I ever thought it would. Those last five years were filled with some of the most intense moments. The constant pressure of meeting the deadlines was always there, but meeting it with vigor and passion, the drive to out do the competition was more difficult. For the competition I faced wasn’t limited to myself but was also comprised of my best friends. Those friends supported and encouraged me to think, to “get in to it” and to chug. Over those past five years it’s amazing what kind of transformations we went though, from sneaking beer into the dorm rooms (like you didn’t already know) to hitting up the bars at 5:00 in the afternoon to let off some steam with a couple of drinks. It’s funny to think that if I was given eyeliner my freshman year I would have thrown it back to whom ever handed it to me, but now I honestly will not leave the house with out the black lining my lash line.

Driving back to St .Louis from Manhattan was a strange experience. I didn’t feel any older, (sure not any) wiser or smarter, but it was a fact: I wasn’t coming back as a student, as a member of the club, as a kid, but I was leaving as a supposed “adult.” As the music from my car stereo played a series of classic tunes, flashes of the past began to fill my minds eye. The songs on the radio became the soundtrack to the Highlight Reel of memories from the best time of my life.

Things that popped into my head were things like the first time I met Julianna whom I determined at that instant was one girl I never wanted to get in a fight with, verbal or physical, for that mater. This has held true since, but all for different reasons. She became my work-out buddy and person I could always depend on for Strawberry Margarita Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, and for advice and council.

I thought about the time John showed up at my dorm room door with a bloody fist filled with glass asking to be “fixed.” He got into a fight with the safety glass that protected a fire extinguisher in the boys dorm and escaped to find me. Even today I am still not for sure who won.

I will never forget when Adam feel asleep standing up, drawing a line, in the middle of a sentence, after cutting a gazillion Plexiglas triangles all for a stair case that was to reflect a water fall, which ended up falling to pieces when we moved to a different studio, because ours was condemned.

Moments like the time Troy fell asleep during crits, with his head resting on his fist which in turn was resting on his knee, and with a gaping mouth drooled onto the floor leaving a sizable puddle under his chair. Luke and I were the only ones who saw and therefore are the only two people that still laugh at him for it.

Any time I hear the name Charlie; I will laugh and then immediately think of Yolanda.

I made the best friends I could ever ask for, I felt more at home with these people then I ever did anywhere else. For the first time, I had an honest to God twin. Mackenzie served as my confidant, my encouragement, my reality check, and most significantly my goofy partner in crime. Often times professors would call us Double Trouble, and mistake one of us for the other. We sat across from each other in studio in four different semesters, and lived together for the most amazing semester in Prague. We would plan our futures together while hand drawing floor plans and elevations. These futures often involved marring rich, successful, tragically handsome men, having sweet brownstones in Boston [of course] owing a second house in the mountains, all the while being the most powerful Architects this world has seen. We laughed most days about non senseical things and vented to each other about the weeks most frustrating events, which probably lead to more laughter. We had dance parties, Allison knows, she was there.

I will never laugh has hard as I did in studio with the people that suffered, grew, learned, and survived with me.

I can’t believe that the past five years happened, but I am so glad that they did. It was defiantly surreal to see everyone in their black gowns with mortarboards donning their well rested heads. This last day at KSU was much like the first. Everyone was clean, well rested, wide-eyed and had no idea what to expect from the future. As much as this was the end, it was a beginning, the start of something new, something that isn’t Seaton Hall, something that isn’t Kansas State, but soon will reveal itself as just as exciting and miraculous ways.