It’s April and the end of April and the end.

The end of college for me and the rest of the Class of 2015; the end of another school year for everybody else. People are giving speeches, and organizations are hosting ceremonies, and nostalgia hides behind every bloom. Summer beckons.

Here I am, writing my 176th piece in The Daily Beacon (my last), and all I can think of is some curly-haired kid I don’t remember, sitting on a bunk bed in Morrill Hall. There’s so many things I wish I could tell you.

Like how I long to see the way you grow and change over the next four years, because even I who lived it have already forgotten so many moments. Please, write them down. Document your life for your future self, for my sake. I wish I had written more. You will wish you had written more.

And if I told you that you’d get kicked out of your fraternity house and have to report it on the front page of the school newspaper the next day, would you still join one? I hope you would; I’m glad I did. You might learn about sex, drugs and pigs, but more important, you will learn about brotherhood – and what it means to take a punch in the nose and fire back.

Get involved with your spirituality, fast. College demands so much energy that faith in Something Else becomes vital. You will be rocked by tragedies more violent and shocking than you could imagine; you will see the bloodstains of loved ones. Do not approach these matters alone, but in all things, be at one with God – whatever you perceive Him, Her, or It to be.

Learn people’s names. It is easy to forget a name, but so much harder to forget the hurt in someone’s eyes when you don’t know the most basic thing about them. Especially because people will know your name. They will know it because you want them to; because you join every organization you can and ask questions in every class. Do not be ashamed, but be careful – behave as if everyone is watching.

That’s not to say behave, however. By all means, misbehave! Go streaking on Ayres lawn; fight your best friend in an alleyway; try mushrooms, if only once. Pull an all-nighter and close down a bar the next day; kiss someone you hardly know; steal a construction cone. Don’t smoke cigarettes, but if you do, roll your own. It’s cheaper that way.

Fall hopelessly, senselessly in love with your best friend, and don’t worry about how it all works out in the end. Either it will or it won’t, but worrying about your relationship will only distract you from enjoying the time you have. Take trips together, read books together and cook breakfast together, because the superficial flirtations that start at bars and end in bedrooms won’t lead to those pleasures. I only found them when I found her.

Make more time for the people who care about you. Thank them, do things for them without being asked, and stay in touch with them. Too often, I chose meetings and appointments and “stuff” over them, and I regret it more than anything else. Never be too busy for friends. Classes don’t matter as much as we think they do.

And please, dear freshman, read the Daily Beacon every day. It has come so far since I was you. We have a new advisor, a new layout, a soon-to-be new advertising director and website. We have a training program with the journalism program for the first time, ever, and we have a new red table in the newsroom. There’s even a sign on the door now.

If you give up on that place, the paper will disappear someday. It needs you, to read and write but also to craft and slave over. Your love will be redeemed. The Beacon has taught me skills and won me dream jobs, but more than that, it has given me friendships that carried me through deadlines and despair. It became my identity.

When the time comes for you to leave The Beacon behind, you’ll be where I am – reflecting on four years of orange and white, from freshman to a fresh man. You’ll walk into the newsroom one last time, ignore the yellowed pages of your college career taped to the wall and fight a growing emptiness in your gut. It will be time to say goodbye, so you will sit at a desk and stare at the blank page of the rest of your life.

It will be April and the end of April and the end, and you won’t know how to start.

R.J. Vogt is a senior in College Scholars. He is moving to Yangon, Myanmar to work as a reporter at The Myanmar Times, and can be reached at [email protected].