College is the awkward bridge between teenage years and “real” adulthood. We write 20-page research papers but still rely on our parents to do our taxes. We’re not children, but we don’t cook our own food every night either. 

It’s easy to forget that we’re living the lives our 10-year-old selves dreamed of. We spend hours every day studying, but also have daily sleepovers with our best friends, often wake up to fresh snow on the ground, and have an ice cream machine in the cafeteria. Yet we are so often unphased by these things.

As students, we are continually bogged down by our never-ending studies. While these are good and important aspects of our lives, we have to remember that this is the last time in our lives we can be both adults and juveniles. In reality, we’re just kids who haven’t been released to the real world yet. And it would be a shame to use these four years in limbo worrying about the future or concentrating on the past.

We don’t bear the full weight of adulthood responsibilities, nor should we want to. As tempting as it is to stare far into the future, we should instead focus on what is right in front of us. In 10 years, we’ll look back on our college days and want some of that time and carelessness back.

Let’s enjoy the fact that we’re 20-somethings with few responsibilities and relatively fast metabolisms: eat the ice cream, wander through the snow, and be willing to stay up later than the bedtime you set for yourself. Your college days, and last remaining bit of childhood, are all too quickly disappearing.