For the past couple of weeks, my dad has been repeating a few words to me that have yet to hit me with their full weight until I sat down to write this column, my last column for The Daily Eastern News:

“College is like a cup of coffee.”

An absolute delight, but much too brief.

Looking back at who I was as the person I am now, I owe everything to this university.

Like everyone, I was scared. I had no declared major, let alone a declared interest in attending Eastern. College was always the plan, of course, but not a college in Charleston, Illinois. A small town with a small university didn’t seem big enough for who I thought I was at the time.

This will be the first and last time I ever say this, but mom, you were right: this was the place for me.

This is the place that cultivated my talent and hobby for career into a major and a career. The journalism department’s staff and students are unmatched—the ability and experience they all possess is admirable. Without their encouragement, I would have never found the confidence to start reporting and eventually serve on the Editorial Board for all the student publications, including Editor-in-Chief for the 100th edition of The Warbler Yearbook.

This is the place that led me to my friends who made a strange new world feel like a familiar landscape. Roommates, floormates, classmates, coworkers and sorority sisters, who all started out with simple roles in my life, became integral to my college experience as a whole, leaving me to wonder where they have been the past 18 years.

This is the place that became a reason to dread the holidays and summer because it took me away from where I was starting to find my purpose, direction and identity.

I will not bore you with my personal memories. But I will tell you the facts: I would not have had a fulfilling undergraduate experience if I didn’t go to Eastern.

This transition lives up to the infamous “bittersweet” feeling we hear so much about this time of the year and will be a difficult one, not because I am sad, but because I am in awe it has come and gone so quickly but has done so much for me in a time that does, in fact, feel comparable to only a cup of coffee.

Though this cup may be empty, I could not feel any fuller.

Carole Hodorowicz is a senior journalism major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or at cdhodorowicz@eiu.edu.