There are certain moments that, when you are right in the middle of them, you know you’re going to remember forever. You can feel yourself filing everything away—the smell, the sounds, the people you’re with, the way the light hits the trees—manually forming the memory so you can bring it back up in its entire perfection later on in life. When I was a kid, I went to a camp in the Florida Keys on an island along the 7 mile bridge. Once, on a walk along the bridge, a storm started to roll in over the ocean right at sunset. To this day, that storm remains the single most impressive and visually stunning bit of weather I’ve ever seen. Several of us stopped along the side of the road to watch the spectacle, and even though it was going to make us late for dinner, the counselors allowed it, because I think they too could tell this was going to be one of those memories. The visual details have softened a bit over the years, but I can still remember the feeling of awe and the sense of being utterly present in that specific moment. The clouds formed an arch around the storm, making it look as if the thunder and lightening were contained on a stage over the ocean. The colors of the sunset made the dark thunderclouds even more vividly purple, and the lightening streaked all the way down to the water. We were still completely dry on the bridge, but we could see the curtain of rain as it approached. That was one of the first times I can recall being aware of a life-changing memory while it was still being formed.

Hardly anything at Carleton was like that. Most of the time it just felt like school, and I took a lot of it for granted. Don’t get me wrong—there were some beautiful moments and I spent a lot of time feeling incandescently happy. But considering I spent four of what I’ve, of late, been considering the best years of my life there, I’d expect to have more of those manual-memory moments than I can count on one hand. Maybe it was because the vast majority of those lasting memories come at unexpected times. It’s not often that you get advance warning that your life is about to change and rarer still is the warning that it’s going to be the little things that do it. Those tiny, fleeting pockets of bliss that come out of nowhere, snapping your head to attention and gripping fast to that place wherever those memories are stored. It’s not like the storm in the Keys, when we could see it coming from miles away and take the time to quiet our minds and get ready to soak everything in. More often than not, there’s no time to prepare. College rushed through like a flash flood and the best I could do was hope that somebody somewhere was taking notes. With four consecutive years of continuous life-altering experiences—the big stuff and the little stuff—most of the time I was just trying to get my feet underneath me, recovering from the last wave or gearing up for the next. Fat October snowflakes, sunburned shoulders, cold ice and bruised hips, naked and earnest sincerity, bike rides through campus at 3am, so many stars, so many goslings, so much goddamn snow.

*****

Perhaps it’s already self-evident, but I was at Carleton this past weekend. I was in town for the graduation of the class of 2009—the folks who were freshman when I was a senior. It was hard to leave, knowing my excuses for returning are only going to become flimsier, and my ties to that place are only becoming more frayed. It was absolutely bittersweet. It felt like coming home and I was glad to be there, wondering when I’d be back and thinking about all the important things I used to take for granted and now desperately miss.

At times, if I wasn’t paying attention, it was almost as if I forgot I was only visiting and would find myself falling into a familiar pace along the paths between the buildings. Instead of bringing memories back up to the surface, it was like I’d actually been transported back a few years to when the people and places that surrounded me were like extensions of my own limbs and my proprioceptive sense of self included the entire campus. It was more than familiar, it was like no time had passed at all and Carleton and I had just picked up exactly where we left off.

So now I’m back in Louisville, sitting at my desk and feeling wistful and nostalgic. It’s a sobering notion to consider what a cliche I’ve created for myself, waking up every morning, driving to a job I hate and trying not to think about all that “wasted potential.” Maybe there’s still potential yet, left in the reserve and maybe I’ve got great things—fulfilling things—in my future. But it’s hard to gain the proper perspective, when the two lives—the one with it all ahead of me, and the one with Sisyphean spreadsheets—butt up so flush together.