"Sorry Pretty Baby, but I Always Take The Long Way Home..."

So in about four and a half hours, I’ll be heading home for the summer.

Sorta weird to think that I won’t get to wander down the hallway anytime I’m bored or over to the Stud Lounge futon anytime construction workers are banging on the wall right outside my window. Weirder to think 3:00 AM Reckers smoothies and creepy cab drivers won’t be into play until August, or that nobody’s going to understand me making fun of North Quad or parietals at home. Russell Carter jokes will go over everybody’s heads, and so will the fact nobody really likes Keough Hall, save for Dusty.

Maybe some people will understand what happens when I mispronounce “Barbara Hernandez” or simply add the correct emphasis on “Her?”. “Come On!” won’t mean anything, I won’t have anyone to shock with, Flanagan’s Army may as well be some defunct unit from the Korean War and nobody will understand the beauty of a Ben Folds concert at Wabash.

Good byes suck, even though you know you’ll be able to keep in touch with everyone and three months really isn’t that long when you think about it. People faded out slowly, starting with Pete drifting away to New Mexico via Kansas this morning. Everyone is still basically here, but no one’s staying much past tomorrow morning, unless they’re in one of the various singing groups. Come 2:00 tomorrow afternoon, the campus will be empty in comparison to what it was only 48 hours earlier.

I don’t love Notre Dame with all my heart like some people. The weather sucks, there’s some stupid rules and I completely understand that we’re a hateable place, with the football team’s lack of a conference and the constant publicity for little success over the last decade. I wasn’t a legacy student coming here, nor was this really my first choice; it was just something I kind of stumbled into. But whether the actual school has anything to do with it, the stupid place sorta grows on you. I feel it has more to do with the people than anything, but even after complaining and wishing for warm weather and sun-shiny days, I find it difficult to think I’d be having that much better of a time someplace else.

So come tomorrow afternoon, when no one appreciates a three-game sweep of Renee and Susan in Euchre (we ended our second series of the year up 6-2 after dominating them today – they’ll owe us a lovely little dinner in August after we finish the series), when Mike Flanagan holds little to no control over anyone and countless Arrested and Office references are flying overhead, making me look ridiculous, I’ll love being home. People inform me that the Ranchero is heaven, and I enjoy it, so I know I’m going to a good place, but it’ll be no Dillon Hall.

So treks to TC will be replaced with poker nights, Reckers’ runs with Sheetz runs and Fighting Irish games with Pirate games. One not really better than the other (other than Sheetz obviously trumping Reckers), but all oh so very different. As happy as I will be to be able to drive again and go golfing, I’ll be just as upset I can’t find someone to watch an episode of Buffy with at five in the morning or can’t play CornHole out on the quad when I should be doing some kind of work. I’ve always wished I could somehow combine both home and school, eliminating the whole work part from both, but that’s not going to happen, so as stated before, I’ll enjoy both as much as possible when I’m there.

So I guess with all the stuff that’s not perfect about this place, I didn’t really appreciate the parts of it that were pretty great. A wise man once said “Life is just a series of peaks and troughs, and you don't know whether you're in a trough until you're climbing out, or on a peak until you're coming down.”

Maybe I’m not exactly coming down by going home tomorrow, but I definitely know I’m not climbing out of anything. God bless all of you guys and gals at ND, you earned yourself a summer. We had a nice little run together, but don’t slack up on me, because it’s far from finished. We’re at a peak in life right now, and I’m far from ready to come down.

Happy Summer Break.