The drums of “The Adults Are Talking” started as I made my way down Spartan Avenue. I passed people out on their lawns, heard singing in the distance, smelled a bonfire in the air. I had been walking this same path all year. It was the same path I walked to go to class, the same path I walked to study at the library, the same path I walked to go downtown with friends on a Friday night. I had done this walk so many times before, but it felt different this time. This time, I knew it was one of the last times.

I had been thinking about that a lot recently. In the months leading up to my graduation, I was constantly bombarded with the knowledge that whatever moment I was experiencing might be the last: my last class, my last Impact 89FM meeting, my last time walking down Spartan Avenue. I held onto these moments with all my might and tried so hard to take everything in, tried so hard to notice every blue sky and feel every feeling of excitement and hear every note of every song. I tried so hard to remember every moment so I would never forget.

“Don’t Delete the Kisses” came on as I headed towards campus, and I was taken back to sophomore year apartment parties and driving with the windows down and staying up talking until 2 a.m. I was reminded of laughing with new friends and feeling terrified about big decisions and feeling free with independence. I gripped onto the memories tight. I wanted to stuff them in my pockets and wrap my fingers around them and never let them go.

I stopped at my favorite spot by the river: the hill between the library and Wells Hall. Whenever the weather was nice, I would come here to draw or read or think. Today, I sat by the river and tried to remember.

As I made my way back to Spartan Avenue, “Wait Till Something Better” started, and when I closed my eyes, I was back in the fall of my senior year, biking the streets of East Lansing and dancing in my bedroom. At least the songs helped me remember.

When I think back to before MSU, I think back to a different person entirely. I think back to my 17-year-old self, who was deciding where to go to college. I think about the anxiety that consumed me while making that decision. I was terrified of making the wrong choice, terrified that the wrong choice would alter the course of my life. But something about MSU had always felt right. I felt it when I visited MSU for the first time, and I felt it whenever I tried to imagine the next four years ahead of me. MSU had always felt familiar. MSU had always felt like home.

Now, at the very end, I am so glad that I listened to my gut. I truly believe that I became the person I was meant to be here. I found my people here. I found my place here. I found myself here. MSU still feels like home, and I think MSU will always feel a little bit like home. 

As I turned the corner back on to Spartan Avenue and saw my house in the distance, the guitar of “Keep The Rain” echoed with every step I took. This song was the soundtrack in the background of my life for the past month. Something about it captured everything I had been feeling recently. It felt like change being right around the corner, like memories slipping through your fingers, like the weight of nostalgia settling in before anything was even gone.

As I approached my house, the feelings of nostalgia and happiness and sadness and excitement overtook me all at once. The epitome of every feeling I felt here and every person I was here and every moment I had here met me on the porch of the place I had called home for the past year. The playlist ended like an exhale, and I felt the buzz of a new song in my bones. The drums of the next chapter of my life.

Goodbye, MSU. I’ll never forget you.