And so it begins: door-propping, luggage-carrying, book-buying, hot-neighbor scouting. We funnel onto campus once again, the school year brimming in all of its potential--new dorm rooms, new classes, new beginnings.

Moving in brings with it the pomp and circumstance of any time-honored tradition. A parade of parents is followed by an orchestra of idling car engines and choreographed move-in moves: the sofa up-the-stairs shimmy, the kick-to-open-up-the-propped-door. At the end of this procession, though, the adults wave goodbye as they watch their kids march on.

I look forward to move-in day and the first day of classes with absolute excitement--friends, relationships, learning. What’s not to like? I get to organize my desk drawers exactly how I want. I am master and commander of my room layout. And there is the bliss of office supplies: new Sharpie colors and neon Post-Its. Gel pens or ball point? Binder or notebook?

All I have to do, however, is think back less than four months, when a deranged, sleep-deprived image of myself pulled out her hair studying day and night, leaving the confines of her room only for caffeine, bathroom pit-stops and commiseration with dormmates over the evils of the quarter system. Only a few more hours of torture, I would tell myself, and finals would painfully, excruciatingly, thank-the-lord fully be over.

Summers free me from the chains of studying and cramming. I swear off all analytical thinking, not to mention critical analysis, from June onward. When summer rolls around, though, I immediately pine for school once more.

Is my memory really that short? Or that bad?

I suppose that as cycles go, the yearly academic shuffle is a well-timed one. As soon as summer jobs start getting sour or living at home becomes too restricting, it’s back to the land of no vegetables, no bedtimes and parties just around the block. When classes start to drag and spring temperatures rise, we are set free once again to bask in the joys of home-cooked meals, candles in our rooms and pets. We are scholastic dogs, who beg to enter the palm-o-plenty world of Leland, whine for carefree summer days and then whimper to enter the world of academia once more.

I think, partially, it's the ol’ “You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” We don’t appreciate the lazy Sundays until finals leave our circadian rhythms narrowly close to disrepair. We don’t appreciate the excitement of class offerings until quality entertainment during the summer becomes watching the cat--while it’s napping. (I swear sometimes they flick their tales to a beat even while they are completely asleep.)

I guess the next thing always tends to just shine bigger and better. That grass is always greener. iPods continuously get skinnier and screenier. Studies have shown that humans are more excited and aroused by prospective relationships than they are by their reality. Or take Marilyn and Elvis--they are so damn famous because they never reached their full promise. Mystery and potential are attractive. Possibility is intoxicating.

Reliving the long, excruciating hours in Green isn’t.

It is just easier, for us and those around us, to gloss over the bad. You only hear about the wins in Vegas, the girls that said yes and the finals that were aced while hung-over. I, too, don’t want to relive the boring, the rote or the friends that didn’t turn out to be great friends. I know I’d rather not be reminded of my most potent recent follies, embarrassments and heartbreaks.

I think the bad comes to us in bursts of truth--the picture of an ex or a random run-in with an ex-friend sends us reeling into honest reminiscence. We tell our friends and our parents all about the fun and the good things that happen all the time, but only occasionally are our sloppy memories punctuated by moments of sharper self-reflection. It is in those rushes of things gone bad, regrets, and (hopefully) lessons learned that we adapt, change and grow.

At least, that’s when I hope it happens..

So here's to the excitement of class and to highlighter pens with Post-It notes built in.

And here's also to finishing a summer that was fun (but often lonely), to keeping in better touch with the friends I love, to procrastinating less ridiculously and to working harder. Here's to the excitement of a new year, and learning from the last four.