Earlier this year at Schwemms, I stopped to talk to a friend whom I hadn't seen for awhile. "It seems like so many things from freshman year are coming back again," she said, and although I agreed with her, I'm just beginning to see how right she was. It is something my friends and I have been noticing recently-how it seems so many people are reliving their freshman years. Some people are living on their freshman floor again, others are rediscovering freshman romances and still others are finding themselves in situations eerily similar to those of our freshman year. It's almost as if part of a senior's existence is regressing back to freshman year.

Of course, it's almost inevitable to look back to the beginning when you're at the beginning of the end. It's nostalgia-wanting to relive the high that was freshman year, with new friends and new experiences barreling towards you, the nights spent talking that turned into mornings, obstacle courses created at four in the morning and communal viewings of Red Sox-Yankees games and the O.C. But I think a large part of it is curiosity, too. There's a strange consciousness about growing up; you assume that you've changed over these past three years, that you've learned and matured, but it's hard to know exactly how, or where. I can't help but think about who I was as a freshman and wonder exactly what I used to think or feel, and whether it's different from what I do now.

Growing up is such a seamless process; by the time you realize you've changed, the point where it happened is usually already long past. It takes solid, life-changing events like college graduation to make you realize that something has happened in the past three years, and that although you may feel the same, there's something different about who you were freshman year and who you are now. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. Just being a senior puts you in a certain frame of mind that's overly conscious about the time you have left at Amherst, what you've done in the past and what you'd change if you had the chance.

I think it's that frame of mind that makes people rediscover freshman year, that makes them go back to it. I have this compulsion to make the most out of senior year, to do everything that I haven't done before and to do everything that I may not have the chance to do again. It's little things like going to the Cage after Homecoming, where freshman year my friends and I spent hours eating and taking over the little kids' table to make embarrassing signs for each other's doors. "We have to go again this year," said my friend. "Just to bring things full circle."

Why is it so tempting to bring things full circle, to make old things new again? I wonder sometimes if it's another type of curiosity, of us wondering what it would be like to do freshman things over again as (hopefully) older, wiser individuals. It's us asking "what if?" to our college careers, wondering if things would turn out differently a second time around. And of course, there's also a certain sense of now or never, especially when it comes to romantic interests.

I don't know whether events really do tend to circle back, or whether it's just our way of thinking that makes them seem so. There is a certain comfort in doing things you've done in the past; it's much easier to think of the past and to remember the good things rather than the bad. Another friend, an alum who came back for Homecoming, couldn't stop talking about how much she missed Amherst and New England. "But I guess it's just like ex-boyfriends," she said. "The good things are so easy to remember."

I think that's true about this freshman-senior phenomenon, too-the fact that the good things about freshman year are often so easy to remember when stressed out about theses and job applications. So many things remind me of the past. So many things I do are connected to the past. I guess maybe it's a mixture of things: I can't help looking back and I can't help but do things that encourage me to think of the past. I'd like to think that I've changed, and I'd like to think that what once frustrated and challenged me wouldn't now. I want to be able to graduate thinking that these four years have meant something more than just a degree.

It's not that I think I won't. But seeing so many reflections of freshman year around me, I can't help but wonder how so much time has passed when I sometimes feel like I'm still the little girl from a dorky magnet high school.