Two things happened this week that haven’t happened in my life since my freshman year three years ago, and both stirred up a certain degree of regret in me. One was that I walked up the stairs into the Mary J. Booth Library. The other was that I had my picture taken with two particular good friends of mine.

My first trip back to the renovated library, I imagine, was much like a child’s first visit to the zoo. I wandered in and out of rooms with wide eyes, staring at strange and wonderful sights like spacious stacks and new furniture.

Students were everywhere, kicked back studying with their shoes off or chatting to one another as they sat at computer terminals. It was like a scene out of some Eastern promotional pamphlet. For the first time, I felt like a real honest to goodness college student.

Ironically, I only have two months left to enjoy it.

As I left the library, I felt that wistful sense of regret that I didn’t have a library in which to study, research and run into half the campus for the past three years, but I really didn’t have any means to avoid that regret.

I could have avoided the regret I felt as a result of my other experience, however.

My freshman year I had two girlfriends who were everything to me here at Eastern. Anyone can attest to the fact that freshman year is hard. Transitions and new pressures compound to make it a difficult and scary time. Without my two friends, I never would have made it.

We ordered pizzas, painted our nails, watched Felicity, and put Britney Spears’s “Baby, One More Time” on repeat in the stereo. We tried to figure out life and change, and we cried and fought and laughed until we felt sick. We disagreed about many things, but they were always fiercely loyal to me.

The thanks I gave them was to find an entirely different group of friends my sophomore year who “had more in common with me,” and I slowly lost touch with my two freshman year girlfriends over time.

Neither of them are even here now to read this. I said good-bye to both of them this weekend during a pretty unexpected reunion at a party. One is leaving to study in Germany for a semester, and the other had to go back home for personal reasons.

This weekend, the three of us were photographed smiling together, a phenomenon that hasn’t happened in almost three years.

It’s only now that they’re gone that I fully realize what a fool I was to let them slip out of my life. Only now I understand their differences from me and their wildness are treasures I have lost.

I know I will still stay in touch with them from time to time, but my chance to live college with them is gone for good.

No regrets. That’s how I try to live. I screw that up a lot, like I did big time with my two friends. I now have two months left here to finish right.

Some of you seniors are in my boat; others have a year, two years, or more left. Regardless, it’s over in a blink, and we have one chance to make it great and be with these people before we’re scattered all over the country.

So the moral of the story is: live like there’s no tomorrow. No regrets. And go to the library. It’s really nice.