I have to admit, when my mom and I first packed up our seven-passenger van and started on the eight-hour drive back to Nebraska, I wasn’t looking forward to leaving Saint Louis University for three months. I had lots of reasons to feel that way-I didn’t want to leave my new friends, I didn’t want to go back to working 40 hours a week, and I wasn’t ready to give up the freedom that came with living away from home.

It was difficult to accept the fact that my G.P.A. would be a bit lower than the one that I had received in high school, and not because I hadn’t tried just as hard.

There are a lot of things that I want to do differently next year. For starters, I won’t bring my entire wardrobe to school with me. That goes for my non-microwaveable plastic dishes and my bulky photo albums as well-there’s just not enough room in a tiny dorm space for things that you never have the time to use. I’ll leave my glitter, glow-in-the-dark ceiling decorations at home because they were a pain to peel off of the walls after they’d been sticky-tacked up there for seven months. I will convince myself to make use of the tape recorder that I got for Christmas two years ago and bring it to 8 a.m. class with me on mornings that I don’t feel like taking notes.

Hopefully, all of these little lessons will come in handy come the 12th of August. I have been contacted by a representative from SLU – the guy whose “We want you to love SLU as much as we do” attitude convinced me to pack up my bedroom and move across the Midwest to a campus full of naked statues, palm trees and pink tulips – to be on a panel for prospective freshmen. Remembering the way that my dad grilled the students we met last year up in Omaha, I am a little worried about taking the stage. However, I am convinced that I had enough positive experiences in the past year to communicate to them what a great choice I made when I decided to come to SLU. I look forward to telling prospective students about how great SLU is, even though I know now that there are some things that I wish I could change.

I am not quite sure that I will be ready by the end of August to turn in my swimsuit and sandals, but I am looking forward to returning to my friends, my freedom and my flex points. I have learned to appreciate the time that I have to relax before hitting the books again this fall; even though it was hard tearing myself away from the excitement of big-city life, this summer has turned out to be one of the best I’ve had. I think that I grew up a little over the past year, and I’m hoping that all of these experiences, good and bad, will better prepare me for what’s ahead, even if the picture is a little foggy right now.