Saying goodbye to certain things also means saying hello to new ones

Haley Miller

Guest columnist

Right now, clothes, books, toiletries, snack foods, electronics and music CDs are strewn all over my bedroom floor and mattress. Things are overflowing from drawers, sticking out of the closet, half-thrown into boxes and smattering the rough, beige carpet with towering obstacles.

As I head off to college tomorrow, the pervading feeling is excitement.

Over the next four years, I will expand my circle of friends, shed the confining social structure and stereotypes of grade school, embrace newfound independence, start to carve out my preferred lifestyle and hopefully figure out what the heck it is I want to do with my life.

Underneath the bubbly exterior, though, is a scared and vulnerable 18-year-old girl who can’t even decide what color sheets she wants to sleep under next year, much less declare a major that will inevitably be changed 17 times.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’m relieved that Pacific Lutheran University is only 45 minutes away. I’m afraid to be on my own.

It’s funny to acknowledge this fear, because I always have enjoyed being home alone; in fact, it’s time I usually covet. At the end of the day, though, I expect my parents and younger brother to be home, all of us sleeping under the same roof.

Of course, I won’t be totally alone. I do have a roommate, and that, too, is a scary prospect, opening up my life to a complete stranger for the next nine months, as well as a hall full of girls who probably feel the exact same way as I do.

In a way, packing up my things symbolizes the way in which I have recently been compartmentalizing my life, assigning chapters to all that has come and passed.

I have shoeboxes filled with mementos from different relationships, countless file folders and binders organized by school subjects, and clothes arranged in order of color and warmth.

It is a very tedious process, sorting through mountains of junk that I once treasured. I feel like I’m boxing up my childhood and putting a big “Don’t Open ’til Christmas” sticker on it, for when I’m old and nostalgic.

Strangely enough, I don’t feel too sentimental about any of it. Yet.

For the first time in my life, I find it incredibly easy to part with unflattering photos, old schoolwork and the ill-fitting clothes in my closet.

Before, I would cling to everything with the desperate thought that I might someday need it. If I don’t watch it, I tend to keep everything: all e-mails, magazines, birthday cards, receipts, clothing tags, fortune cookie messages and movie tickets.

This summer hasn’t been all about materialistic farewells, either. As I predicted, the summer flew by, and now most of my friends are already halfway across the country, settled into their dorms.

I’ve had to say goodbye to friends, teachers, mentors. Goodbye to high school and my title of editor in chief for the school newspaper staff. Goodbye to my Chevy Silverado, 10-acre yard and heavenly, queen-sized mattress.

For now, that is.

Fortunately, I can stop by home pretty much any day of the week. Most of my friends don’t have that privilege.

What won’t be waiting here for me when I visit, though, is the routine that I have established during the past 18 years. Nothing will ever be quite the same again.

On the other hand, this fall will be all about hellos.

Hello to new acquaintances, professors and advisers. Hello to college life, my first real job, and an editorial position in a completely different journalism program.

Hello to freedom and the responsibilities that accompany it.

A favorite song of mine, titled “Growth,” ends with India.Arie crooning, “The only thing constant in the world is change. That’s why I stay; I take life as it comes.”

I hope that I, as well as fellow 2009 graduates scattered all across the country, can embrace this philosophy in the coming months.

Haley Miller is a freshman at Pacific Lutheran University, where she is the LuteLife editor of its award-winning student newspaper, The Mast.