I will be honest. I do not think the scariest part about graduating is graduating itself, but moreso how fast the last four years have gone by.

It has really been hitting me lately that in two short weeks Eastern will be just a memory and come August, I will not be packing my bags to move back to Charleston.

But because of all that, it made me realize, as cliché as it is, to live in the moment. And while it feels like even first semester was decades ago, there are pieces of first semester freshman year that I remember like it was yesterday.

I met my best friends at Eastern. And a majority of these “Sean Says” that I have written have been stories from my time at Eastern.

I wrote about how my friend Gary and I took the move-in bins in Lawson and flipped them over to turn them into soccer nets to play.

We were kicking rockets in the hallway until one errant kick hit the RA’s door, ending the game.

Same friend, another great idea a few months later: hockey in the hallway. I, for whatever reason, brought mini hockey sticks to school my freshman year and we took some trash cans and played one violent game of knee hockey.

Both of my roommates freshman year rushed, so I was kind of left in the dark as to how to go about the rest of college, let alone freshman year, the biggest step I have made in my life.

But meeting Gary, Dwight and Dan changed college and made it everything it was.

It is weird how much of a home Eastern became. Sit there for a second and just think about how when summer ends you pack up and go back to the same university and it is like you never left.

Your best friends are still there, people you have not seen in months are back, and even then it is like you are best friends again.

I talk about this with Dan all the time, but with the amount of NHL we played my freshman year, his sophomore year, it is a miracle we made it through the year with flying colors.

To put the amount of games we racked up: we played seven-game series with all but five teams in the league. Both playing with all of them.

Oh, and that was in the last two or three months of the school year. We would tell you we surpassed 300 games.

We would drop anything to play “a quick game.” That is all we needed to tell each other that year and the next two years to convince the other that we had plenty of time.

I may or may not have showed up to a couple Daily Eastern News meetings a little late.

If Dan and I remember nothing of our friendship when we are old and gray, we will remember some crazy game we played our sophomore and junior year.

And sadly enough, Dwight and I always talking about the future, is finally here. He is already working and I am about to.

There is not enough space in the newspaper for me to keep going on about this, but I will wrap it up with senior year.

Juan and I played guitar everyday this year and with Gary, Dwight and Dan leaving Eastern over the last year or two, Juan was a big part in getting through this year. Now I actually can do something worth a damn on the guitar.

The thought of graduating is terrifying, but thinking about how fast the last four years have gone and how freshman year still sometimes feels like yesterday is unfathomable.

Sean Hastings is senior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or smhastings@eiu.edu.