A5 - Then and... then

As I was going through some old emails, I stumbled upon this picture, and it immediately sent me back in time to 2002. This is my interface group on the very first day of college, just after we moved all of our stuff into our dorm rooms. We had no idea what to expect from college. We didn't even know each other until we started posing for this photograph.

(At Freed-Hardeman University, the freshmen are separated into various "Interface groups" along with two upperclassmen to help make friends and get acquainted with the campus as well as campus life. Even though Brad and I were already dating, he's not in my group picture, because he was part of his own interface group.)

We did everything together for an entire week. Lots of fun, random, hilarious activities. Also lots of opening up to each other and Bible studies. Once the semester began, we didn't have as many organized events, but we did maintain our friendships throughout the years.

Look at us back then. So young. So naive. So scared of what lay before us. And yet so eager to move ahead.

On graduation day, four years later, after we walked across the stage to receive our degrees, we reminisced together of how little we were when we all met for the first time. The response to the memory was unanimous, "Man, we were so young back then. So much has changed in four short years." Here we are again, on the last day of college. Some of our A5 group transferred to different schools, or dropped out, or graduated at different times, but a lot of us literally started the journey together and ended the journey together, from the very first day to the very last.

Four years is what separated the opening and the closing pictures of our college careers. And, similarly, four years have passed since we donned our caps and gowns and gathered on the library steps for a second time as a group to commemorate that period of our lives.

Look at us back then. So young. So naive. So scared of what lay before us. And yet so eager to move ahead.

Man, we thought we were so big and grown-up. We thought we were the biz-niss. We thought we had it all figured out. We had no idea. I have to admit, sometimes I miss the old days. The college days. The days when I hung out in the student center with a bunch of friends, stayed up all night chatting with girlfriends in the halls of the dorm, when Brad and I walked across campus holding hands, and the biggest stress I faced was finals.

Don't get me wrong. Being a grown up is fun. It definitely has its perks. I can stay out as late as I want with no curfew to follow. I can go wherever I want without signing-out and notifying my Dorm Mom of my whereabouts. (Obviously, FHU was pretty strict.) I get to share a room with the love of my life instead of a group of other girls all fighting over mirror space. I get to decorate an entire house to my liking, instead of squeezing my whole life into a teeny-tiny room. I get to raise a sweet puppy, and eventually, I'll get to start a family.

But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes miss the simplicity of a life filled only of class schedules and social events. Sometimes grownup life is hard and full of responsibility and making right decisions. Sometimes, I just miss the Good Ol' Days.

Thanks to facebook and blogs, many of us have kept in touch. Even others of us have remained good friends to this day, almost forgetting that we originally met on Day One. It's cool to have memories with people that knew me before I had contacts or was married. But it's weird to look back at college, even the end, and think "Man, I was sooo young back then... So much has changed in four short years."