The Sensible One: Saying goodbye is the hardest thing

I can remember my first day at Rider University clearly. I anxiously walked to my room with my parents, cried a little when they left and turned around with a smile on my face. That day I just knew, although apprehensive about the journey, that everything about Rider would be perfect.

Well, needless to say, not everything turned out perfectly for me. I slept through my first class ever when my alarm didn’t go off, I had a conflict with my roommate, and for some odd reason I never seemed to be financially cleared on time. But nothing in life is completely perfect.

Despite the roadblocks along the way and my knowledge of the fact that nothing reaches complete perfection, when I look back at Rider I find it hard to consider my experience at the University anything but perfect.

With the culmination of each year at Rider, a bittersweet feeling would come over me. Knowing that I finished my classes successfully and made it through another year made me ecstatic, but the knowledge that I was one year closer to leaving was always somewhat heartbreaking.

Now it’s my turn to leave. Put on my graduation cap and take the walk that every college student dreams about. I couldn’t be happier to know that I completed college on my own, gave it my all, and still managed to have the time of my life along the way. But that heartbreaking feeling still lingers.

Never again will I move my things into my room after a long summer, sad to be leaving my family’s home, but incredibly relieved to be back to a place that is also a home to me. Never again will I welcome in new freshmen with a smile on my face, while the Conover Resident Advisor staff run around frantically trying to organize what is undeniably chaos.

Never again will I look through my syllabus on the first day of class, getting more and more worried with every turn of the page.

No more Bronc Buffets, no more Rider basketball games with red face paint, and no more stress-filled Thursday nights with some of the greatest people Rider has to offer.

As my college experience slowly comes to an end, here I stand, ready to take my first steps into the real world. I am confident that Rider has prepared me to succeed and I am ready to fly.

But there is a part of me that will always stay here at Rider, that never wants to let go.

At this point there’s really only one thing left to say.

Thank you, Rider. Thank you for four of the most amazing years of my life that I will carry with me for the next 104. Thank you for introducing me to friends that I know will last a lifetime. Thank you, most of all, for all the wonderful memories.

—Nicole Southern
Nicole served as the assistant Features and Entertainment Editor in 2005-2006, and Features and Entertainment Editor in the Fall 2006 semester.