Would you ever think a SUNY Oswego student who lives on a dirt road who’s never had a passport, who’s never been outside of the country, or who’s never even been on a plane before would find himself sitting in a street café in downtown Paris, France?

Neither would I. But that’s what happened to me.

Last spring break, I went down to Alabama to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity in house construction and thought I couldn’t beat that. But when the possibility of going to Paris arose last fall, I reconsidered that thought.

A lot of people my age have been able to venture to foreign lands and I never understood how they were able to do it. I can barely find enough gas money to drive to Syracuse when I need to.

But they somehow found a way. And so did I.

SUNY Oswego offers quarter courses, a chance to study abroad without actually studying abroad. Students enrolled in these courses study a certain topic about a specific place in the world for seven weeks. Then, they go visit that location during spring break.

I happened to be in a class with the same instructor who would teach the quarter course who told me about it.

Ha, yeah right, like I could ever do that, I thought.

But I started seriously considering it. And I realized that if I was seriously considering doing it, I had to seriously get on it.

I talked to my parents about it. I went to financial aid and figured out a way to pay for it. Over winter break, I went and got my passport. I did all the mountains of paperwork and reserved my airline ticket. I took the class, called “Comparative Media,” which examined the properties of media compared between the U.S. and France. And then, I went to Paris.

I remember in third grade filling out one of those papers the first day of school that gave the teacher all about yourself. One of the questions was “Where would you like to travel to someday?” I wrote “I want to see Paris, France someday.” I’m not exactly sure why but I always wanted to go there.

And then, I was. I saw the Eiffel Tower, I saw the “Mona Lisa,” I saw the Palace of Versailles, Notre Dame and so many other things. And of course, since I was there to examine the media there, I was able to visit the French Associated Press, a cinema museum, a communist newspaper and listened to a talk with the French correspondent for National Public Radio. I was also able to walk to the office of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine that came under attack in January that captured global attention.

Then there was just being there itself. I had to keep reminding myself that I was in Paris, a place I never imagined I’d ever go to, let alone at 21 years old. I was the first person in my immediate family to fly since 1983 and the first person to go to a different country at all.

I understand now why people always say to see the world. It definitely changes you and makes you think differently about the U.S. and yourself. That may be the biggest reason why I wanted to go. I was able to talk to people in a different language. I was able to see what their lives were like everyday. And I was able to witness that with a great bunch of people who also took the class, people that were wonderful to spend a whole week with.

I have absolutely no regrets. It was a great way to start the beginning of the end of my time here. When I applied to SUNY Oswego and moved my things in as a freshman, I never would’ve thought I would fly across the ocean my senior year. It’s just another reminder that SUNY Oswego can surprise you.

I’m grateful and lucky that I’ve been able to see a little more of the world before I’m released to it very soon.

Everyone has that side of their life that’s separated from the mainstream “What do you do for a living?” part that normally is the core of our personal definition. I believe it’s the same with college students.

We all can’t be studying for tests and writing papers all the time. We need to have some kind of escape from all of that, and maybe that escape isn’t exactly well known to people other than yourself.

Over the last four years of my time at college, a lot of people have come to me and said “I didn’t know you sang!” and “I didn’t know you were in a band.” Well, I am. I’m a traveling musician and singer/songwriter with two different bands, and that’s my other life.

I’ve been doing it since I was 18. I’ve played in front of many different audiences in many different places. I’ve traveled almost 15,000 miles, from Canada to North Carolina, and lots of places in between, playing and singing for people. It’s a lot of fun, I’ve met a lot of great people doing it, I have lots of great stories to tell from it, and the money I get from it pays for my textbooks.

Which leads to a question I get often regarding it: What’s it like being a traveling musician and college student at the same time?

It sure isn’t easy at times. When I announced I was going to college, a lot of people actually assumed that I was going to school for music. But I’m not, and I’ve never taken a single music course. I’m here to make a career.

Luckily, most of my shows are during the summer so college never really gets in the way. There have been a number of times though where I’ve missed a few classes to leave early for long journeys or have gotten back to Oswego at 2 a.m. after riding back from Virginia, and then work on an assignment that was due for my 8 a.m. class. Yeah, that was fun.

The routes I’ve taken to get to shows during the 2014 season

This past summer was quite a challenge. I was doing an internship in Albany for three months and would often have to make a three hour trip back home, then a multi-hour trip somewhere to play, and then somehow make it back to Albany by Monday morning. This resulted in hitching rides with a lot of people, running to counters at train stations as the last one was leaving, spending all night in bus stations, and I even slept on a bench one night because I had nowhere to stay and my bandmates weren’t in town until the next day.

One weekend turned out to be difficult, but quite an adventure. I was scheduled to play just outside of Ottawa, Canada on a Friday and Saturday night with one band, and then had to be in State College, Pennsylvania by noon on Sunday to play with the other band. I rented a car in Albany and drove home Thursday night, carpooled with my bandmates to Canada Friday morning, got off stage Saturday night at about 11:30, rode five hours back to Syracuse, got back to Syracuse just before the sun rose, then jumped in my rental car and drove another five hours to State College. I made it and played a show with my other band, then drove another six hours back to Albany, getting there just in time to go to work Monday morning. Yeah, I was awake for two and a half days. I know it was very stupid and dangerous and did I say stupid to drive 700 miles without sleeping for that long amount of time, but it’s the sacrifices I have to make if I want to build a career and play music at the same time.

Now I, of course, have always put my schooling first. I’m still highly involved and I still make the Dean’s List every semester. I stayed in Oswego to take my Spanish final instead of going to Tennessee. And my bands have turned down offers to play in Georgia, Florida, and on several cruises to the Bahamas because it would require too much time away. Writing is my career and music will be always be just a strong hobby—not a lifestyle.

I understand that eventually at some point, I will come to a crossroads where I will have to leave my music and focus solely on my career. People ask me all the time when that will be. The answer is simple. I always respond with, “Well, so far I’ve been able to make it work between the two. Whenever I can’t make it work any longer, that’s when it will end.”

I love college and my goals, ambitions, and dreams in college are my top priority. Although I have been able to squeeze music into college itself, like playing at Open Mic Night or my songwriting seminar I put on once a semester in a poetry class. But that’s it.

It’s my other life—and that’s where I would like it to stay.

There are a number of students on the SUNY Oswego campus who keep looking at the calendar and realize they only flip it one more time before the word “December” is printed in big letters at the top. For some, that means their tenure at this school is ending and they will be walking the stage while the snow is on the ground, rather than the traditional dandelions.

There are many reasons for this. Some people are just finished—they have completed the necessary requirements for college and don’t see any point in hanging around any longer. Some do it to avoid paying an extra few thousand dollars that they technically don’t have to. Some weren’t able to graduate in May due to various problems and are  doing so now.

I began school here in the fall of 2011 and am on schedule to graduate in the spring. I have two majors and a minor. One major was technically completed before this semester and the other I could’ve finished this semester. I only have one more class for my minor that I also could’ve taken this semester. So in theory, I could have graduated in December. But I don’t want to.

And it’s not because I’m afraid of the real world and am just taking on another semester because I technically can. It goes way beyond that.

Being a double major and minor, I have had the lovely opportunity to take an armada of different types of classes from different backgrounds. I have taken creative writing classes, journalism classes, history classes, political science classes, broadcasting classes, English classes and more. So I am satisfied that I have had such a versatile class structure while I’ve been here. That is the basis for why I won’t graduate in December.

I love this school. I talk about it all the time. I cannot believe all of the things I have done and opportunities I have taken in my three-and-a-half years here. It has passed my expectations on biblical proportions. And each time I think it can’t get any better, things come up that just might make it so.

The spring semester might be exciting for many ways. I am excited for the classes that I will potentially be taking, and not because they are easy 100-level classes, because they’re not. Some of them are classes that I am not required to take for my majors but I am anyway because they are offered. One of them is a class that examines communications in other countries and sends students to Paris, France over spring break. I have only left the country to go to Canada, I have never been on a plane before, and have always wanted to go to Paris since I was about six years old. An adventure like that would be the perfect ending to my college years. That alone would define my entire philosophy on college: Take the opportunities that are offered and go beyond your comfort zone. For me, both would definitely apply here.

The spring also gives me the time to possibly squeeze one more internship in before I graduate. With a small class schedule, this helps make this possible. There are many opportunities on this campus or near this campus for that.

The spring semester also gives me a window of a few months to do some hardcore job and internship searching, which is quite comforting. I want to leave SUNY Oswego knowing what’s next and not just walk out the door and go wherever the blustery Oswego winds take me.

An undergraduate student has four years. Four years is not a long time. It has gone by astoundingly fast. I want to do as much as I can in those four years because they won’t come again. I’m paying the money and taking the time, but I will take it all because I know what kinds of doors can open at SUNY Oswego.

Here I am, a college senior at SUNY Oswego and a mere seven months from graduating and moving on to something else. Some people might want to spend their last year living it up, partying while they can and taking those 100-level courses just to get the credits they need to graduate. I admit that’s what sounded good to me when school work started getting more difficult as a sophomore.

But that is not what my final year is like however. I figured out very soon after my sophomore year that college is not just the pain of work, no sleep, and spending thousands of dollars. College is a gift. And it’s a gift that comes and goes all too quickly. So I decided I was not going to take those 100-level courses and sleep in all day. I’ve come to realize that those that do nothing in college get nothing out of it. Those that take advantage of the opportunities that college provides at least have a fighting chance in the real world.

I keep myself busy. Mondays I’m in class 10:20-12:25, then go to my internship at the Oswego Alumni Office from 1-4:30, followed by a three-hour American History Seminar from 5:30-8:15, then meetings with the campus media organizations from 8:30-10:30. Tuesdays I have one class, attend the Student Association meeting at 6 to write a weekly column on it, and go to History Club, of which I am the secretary of, from 8:30-9:30. Wednesdays I have class and my internship again and then edit the news articles and start designing the news section of The Oswegonian. I’m usually in that office until 2 or 3 in the morning. Sometimes later. Thursdays, I’m in The Oswegonian office from about 10 a.m. until 9 or 10 p.m., minus my one class. Fridays I have two classes and a meeting at 3. So let’s just say I enjoy my weekends.

On top of that, I write one, two, or sometimes three news article a weeks for The Oswegonian and Alumni Office, opinion editorials, and when I can, write something for this blog. Oh, and of course homework. Can’t forget the homework for three 400-level courses.

Some people will ask why I kill myself with all this work. At times it is stressful and I don’t get to sit down and relax very often, but whenever I think about how tiring it is, I remember that I love it.

Keeping busy keeps me from being bored. I’ve learned that you don’t learn anything by standing still, nor do you get where you want to go.

I can’t even describe the amount I have learned from my time at SUNY Oswego by being active. And all that I have right now comes from all that I’ve done and who I’ve known. The classes, the professors, the newspaper, the clubs, the friends, colleagues, this very blog, have all in some sort, given me something to help propel myself into my future.

And I want to do more. A lot of the enormous opportunities and resources offered in college disappear when you walk down that aisle in that graduation gown. And I want to take advantage of all those that I can in my remaining time here.

I’ve got seven months left. That’s seven months left to paint my image that will stick for the rest of my life. When I walk down that aisle myself, I want to be assured I did all that I could and that I did it the best I could.

I’ve come to find out that in college, the more you give, the more you take away.

Jackson, third from left, at the Matrix Awards in New York City

A lot of SUNY Oswego students go far distances during their short few years here. The classes they take, the people they meet, and the experiences they have make them key candidates for the future job market. Senior public relations major Bridget Jackson is a perfect example of the professionalism that comes out of Oswego.

Last spring, Jackson was awarded the Charlotte Kelly Veal Scholarship by the New York Women in Communications Foundation, an organization that cultivates leaders in the communications field by providing financial support, opportunities for professional development and mentoring, and an entree to a diverse community of communications professionals. The largest foundation for women’s communications scholarships in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut-Pennsylvania region, the foundation awards 15-20 scholarships that range from $2,500 to $5,000 and $10,000, to graduating high school seniors and undergraduate and graduate students who intend to pursue or further a career in communications.  All recipients attend the Matrix Awards held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City and make a live appearance on the TODAY show.

The Charlotte Kelly Veal Scholarship is in honor of former Matrix honoree and much beloved NYWICI member Charlotte Kelly Veal, to a student pursuing a career in public relations.

“The entire experience, from the application process to the awards ceremony itself right up until today is still connecting and making plans with my fellow scholarship sisters is an unreal experience,” Jackson said. “It’s one of those things that if you heard about it, you would assume it is too good to be true. I am in awe that an opportunity like this exists for students.”

Jackson is no stranger to recognition for her public relations either. She was also awarded the “Edward Austin Sheldon Scholar Award” from the Oswego Alumni Association and the “Robert C. Ziegler Memorial Scholarship” from the School of Communications at the 2014 Spring Honors Convocation. The day after coming back from the Matrix Awards in New York City, she was awarded the “Most Likely to Succeed in Public Relations Award” at the 2014 Ozzie Awards, the ceremony congratulating SUNY Oswego students in the School of Communications for their hard work throughout the year. This, she said, was “the icing on the cake.”

“The Ozzies was a surreal experience,” Jackson said. “I attended the Ozzies because I am a very active student on campus and an overall supporter of campus activities. Being in a room full of students who also love communications is a very empowering feeling. So overall, just being at the Ozzies is a great experience. To be recognized in front of all those students and faculty as someone is most likely to succeed in the field I love is amazing. I love PR and to have people say that you will succeed in a field you already love is the best feeling ever.”

Jackson’s experience and strong involvement at SUNY Oswego has helped her become the successful person she is. Since she was a freshman, she has been an office assistant in Career Services, desk attendant in Seneca Hall, a volunteer and employed tour guide for the Admissions Office, a member of the Honors program, an Honors Seminar leader, a blogger for herCampus, a member of Omicron Delta Kappa and Lambda Pi Eta, a member and vice president of PRSSA (Public Relations Society of America) and is currently the president of PRSSA.

She has also been a co-coordinator intern for SCMA Admitted Students Day, a PR intern in the Compass, and PR intern at Kellen Communications in New York City.

“I could talk forever about the resources and opportunities that Oswego provides, it amazes me every day the things this campus has,” Jackson said. “Overall from Oswego, I think I will take away all the connections I made with people. I have met so many interesting people, either in classes, group projects, clubs, employment or simple conversations in the dining hall. Professors and club advisers are a whole different conversation. It amazes me how much they offer to help students. I am an outgoing person and especially with #ozmystory I have been able to meet so many people. I can always walk across campus and say hi to a million people. I made a campus of over 7,000 students my home and coming from an all-girls catholic high school with a graduating class of 70, I never imagined that was possible.”

Empire State Plaza in Albany

Experience. That’s what I’m told employers are looking for. And that’s what I knew I needed. This past summer, I had my first-ever internship. And let me tell you, it was some experience. And all of that experience didn’t merely come from the internship alone, because it was more than just the internship for me.

Last spring, I had completed a whole year of being the Assistant News Editor at The Oswegonian, was named to be the News Editor for my senior year, and had taken multiple writing and journalism classes to the point that I was ready for some field work. When the opportunity for an internship at  The Legislative Gazette in Albany came up, I grabbed it, got accepted relatively easily, and knew it would be a good opportunity.

I live three hours from Albany. Luckily, I have an aunt and uncle that live there so I was able to stay with them. I live on a dirt road in the woods. So I had my parents drive me 12 miles to Fulton, where I took a Centro bus to Syracuse, and then a Greyhound bus to Albany. That was the first time I had ever taken a Centro bus, a transportation bus, and it was also the first time I had traveled by myself. So, just getting to my internship was both a challenge and a valuable experience.

As earlier mentioned, I have lived on a dirt road in the woods my entire life, so spending two months in Albany was a booming metropolis for me. I had to lock the doors all the time, make sure to close the shades, and be weary of shady areas of the city, as I decided to walk home from work every day. I learned how to navigate the city and was eventually able to find my way around.

Being a history minor, I was also able to explore many of the historic locations in Albany and the immediate vicinity. I visited the grave sites of U.S. presidents Chester Arthur, Martin Van Buren, and Franklin Roosevelt. Now along with my goal to see all 50 states, I am now on a mission to see the grave site of every president.

The office of The Legislative Gazette

The Legislative Gazette covers the state legislature and state politics. During my time at the internship, my editor informally made me the environmental beat reporter. Probably two-thirds of the stories I wrote were environmentally related, so as a result, I was in constant contact with the Department of Environmental Conservation, and through the DEC alone, was able to better understand state laws and regulations of state agencies. One article in particular, had me researching the state constitution itself and citing it in the article because it had to be addressed. In an article involving a lawsuit filed to fight teacher tenure laws in New York state, I had to read the preliminary statement of the lawsuit itself to see if New York tenure laws were being sued for the same reason as California’s, which filed a similar lawsuit a month before. I had to again read sections of New York’s and California’s state constitutions to see if there was a difference. The lawsuit in California challenged that the tenure law interfered with a student’s state constitutional right to a “sound education.” The wording in New York’s constitution was different, so the lawsuit was filed to challenge tenure laws on different grounds. It’s really a simple thing but it made all the difference in making sure the information about New York’s lawsuit was factual and accurate.

Aside from law, government, and politics, I of course learned a tremendous amount about the modern fundamentals of journalism. As mentioned previously, I had never been outside of a college newspaper office as far as field work goes. So, needless to say, I was quite nervous about starting this internship. One of the biggest challenges was adapting to the fast-paced world that modern journalism has. At The Oswegonian, I was used to writing one article a week, sometimes two when I was the Assistant News Editor. At The Legislative Gazette, I wrote on average, four or five articles a week (a week being four days.) Every week, I found myself scrambling to get everything finished before the noon deadline on Thursday. After a time however, I improved my time management throughout the week so I wouldn’t have to take work home to work on it or come into the office a half an hour earlier to make sure I could finish everything. I became more organized, wrote down the stories I had to do and who I called and what time and what else I had to do so I knew the appropriate time I needed to complete everything in a clean, accurate, well-written matter.

The New York State Capitol Building

Like any internship should, my time at The Legislative Gazette really improved my communication skills and confidence. A lot of people were surprised when I told them the first time that I was studying journalism. I am really one of the shiest journalists out there really. I was one of the quietest people in my high school but I did all the things that a shy guy wouldn’t do. I acted in plays for seven years, which included two lead roles, I sing and play music regularly on stages in front of hundreds of people all the time, and I’m working on a degree in a field where 90 percent of the job is talking to strangers and asking them questions. I can honestly say that I did the bare minimum of communicating with sources during my freshman and sophomore year of college, but did a little better during my junior year. It was hard for me to adjust. I knew it wasn’t President Deborah Stanley anymore, it was Andrew Cuomo. It wasn’t the president of Student Association anymore; it was the speaker of the State Assembly. I talked to business leaders, state senators and assemblymen, police officers, governor candidates, and more important individuals. I even got to see Governor Cuomo when he signed the bill legalizing medical marijuana Now I know I can talk to anyone about any subject and sound confident and have the authority that a journalist needs to have to be able to conduct a thorough interview. And again, I improved my communication outside the internship. I had to ask workers questions at bus and train terminals, talk to and befriend the fellow interns, adjust to close quarters with my aunt and uncle. It just makes me feel more confident than ever.

Governor Andrew Cuomo

So, I’ve completed my first internship. I don’t regret doing it at all. It was something I needed to do for myself, for every single thing I did that was related to the internship was completely outside of my comfort zone. That’s why I believe I learned so much. I finally pushed myself just a little further on multiple levels and left the office on the last day feeling proud of myself, my accomplishments, and the profession I will be going into. After all, it’s all about the experience. Experience spawns knowledge, confidence, power, and new outlooks. I’m not only more confident, but I am also much more excited about this last school year than I was in May. I have taken on the position of News Editor and started my second internship, as an editorial intern at the OSWEGO Alumni Magazine. After the incredible experience I’ve had this summer, I can’t wait to see what I will learn from these new tasks before me, and how I will think and feel when I come out the other side.

Well, here we are. The summer has come and gone and SUNY Oswego is once again a bustling metropolis. Students, new and old, have come to the “Land of Oz” to prepare themselves for their futures.

Students at SUNY Oswego come from a lot of different locations. There are foreign exchange students, a few out-of-staters, and those from New York City, Long Island, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Utica, Watertown, and many others.

Some people had to make long trips to come back to Oswego last week. I myself ventured on quite a trek to get here. I live in the tiny town of Sterling–a mere 12 miles away.

I know, I know. Whenever I say that, the usual response is “What? And you live on campus?” The answer is yes. Why? There are a lot of reasons.

When I was accepted at Oswego State, I knew I wanted to live on campus. The conditions for living home were just not favorable. Contradictory to what you might expect, my house is still not connected to the Internet in any way, besides on my phone. Most of my assignments are done online so that would cause quite some difficulty.

My senior year stay in The Village

I also do not have my own car, so having my parents drive me here and back every day would waste more time and money than what I’d be saving. And as I’m sure you’re all aware, winter weather is nothing short of unforgiving in the Oswego County area. I’d rather deal with the struggle of walking between Campus Center and Lanigan than trying to drive between Sterling and Oswego in the numerous whiteout conditions that occur.

But those are just physical things. Those weren’t the first things I thought of when I decided to live on campus. I wanted to meet new people, put myself in a place I’d never “been” before; I say “been” because I often went to Oswego to shop for clothes, groceries and go to the movies. I come off as a quiet, reserved individual. But the truth is, I love being around people. Even if I don’t say much or anything, I’ll just sit there and listen. Coming here and staying here gave me the chance to meet a lot of wonderful people and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Above all, I wanted to avoid what people called “13th grade.” I felt like commuting, going to classes and leaving right afterward, would just feel like high school over again, except with strangers. This put me on a whole new level, a step outside of my comfort zone. The best thing about living on campus is that it involves both school and life. It has helped me grow in social interactions, take advantage of the many opportunities on campus, which would be hard to do if I commuted, and make a lot of memories with a lot of really good people. I couldn’t have said it better than my sophomore year roommate (who lives in Oswego and has his own car by the way.) He said, “I realized that you can’t put a price on the kind of experiences you get from living on campus.”

Yes, I will owe thousands of dollars because of it, but money’s just a number and I will pay it back one day and that will be it. The good times I’ve had here will last in my mind for the rest of my life.

Fall 2011

“Room number?”

“525.”

How many times have I recited those three numbers? Endless. That’s because I’ve lived in the same dorm room on campus for as long as I’ve been here. Most people stay in a room for one year and move to a different one. Some people may stay in their rooms for two years. Not many stay in them for three. I’ve said “525,” at the front desk, written “525” when people ask me for my address, and have pushed “5” on the elevator counsel a million times. Tonight, I will spend my last night sleeping in and waking up in the good old 525. Now I’ll be moving on to bigger and better things. I will be moving into a house in the Village to spend my senior year with the greatest people I’ve become friends with during my time at SUNY Oswego. I will enjoy the luxuries of my own room, a full-sized bed, air conditioning, and the ability to cook my own food in my own kitchen and watch television in my own living room. So, why have I stayed in one room for three consecutive years?

Fall 2012

525 in Funnelle Hall is one of the hard, fought-after “L” rooms, the rooms that are not designed like the standard SUNY Oswego room. Their doorway walks into a little entrance way where the residents’ closets are, before turning to the left or right where the rest of the room is. Whether there is actually more space or not, no one really knows. But they seem that way and are usually the first rooms taken when housing selection happens in April. How I and another freshman got one three years ago is beyond me. Along with the space, 525 faces the south side of Campus Center with beautiful Lake Ontario glistening behind it. It is the best thing I could imagine looking at when waking up every morning and right before I go to bed every night. You get to see part of Oswego’s famous sunsets, get to see the storms coming when they are still miles away, and the snow fall down gently or blow so much you can’t see the Campus Center at all.

Fall 2013

I’ve had three roommates in the three years I’ve been here and each have brought their own special qualities to the room while I’ve been here. There has been movie nights, acoustic guitar jam sessions, pizza parties, a ball pit, monkey bars, standard beds, lofted beds, a futon, “go-down-to-dinner rendezvous,” a science experiment that involves a balloon (don’t ask), and best of all, small random get-togethers that started out in the hallway that moved here, that turned into half the floor coming to join. These resulted in staying up till 5 in the morning on a week night, us telling stories that in the telling, turned into stories themselves.

A lot of good memories have been made between these four walls. It’s going to be strange being somewhere else on the Oswego campus, but it is time to move forward. And it’s almost as if I’m not exactly going. My current roommate is staying in the room next year so I will be passing the 525 torch down to him, sort to speak. The last two times I’ve moved out of this room, I’ve laughed, knowing that I was coming right back in three months anyway so “saying goodbye” was nothing. Now it’s going to be different. This time I won’t be coming back. Time never stands still for very long and college is no exception, as it is just a small part of what my life will become. When I get my room inspected, hand in the 525 keys, sign the check-out sheet, and close the door, it will be much like closing the door of the last three years. But there are more things to see while I spend my final year at SUNY Oswego, more memories to made elsewhere, and I know, there are other doors waiting for me to open.