There’s something about endings that never quite sits right with me. They creep up on you, even when you await their arrival. No matter how much you prepare yourself, you never really see the moment when the ending credits might stop rolling. And that is precisely how it feels, writing this at 1:11 AM on a random Sunday night in April—suddenly realizing that college ends in a month.

Pilani, similar to these endings, creeps up on you. As a first-year, I remember reading senior psenti speaks with wide-eyed curiosity, trying to piece together what four years here might feel like. And now somehow, I’m writing my own. I began college as a writer for this club—and I’m leaving as one too. I never imagined I’d become that senior, but somewhere along the way, from replying to frantic 3 AM texts about potential NCs, to sitting cross-legged at ANC debating SU reforms with juniors, I did.

For the longest time, I thought life was about moving in a straight line—from one stage to another—collecting experiences as souvenirs. But the reality of it is that life isn’t linear. It often loops back on itself in the strangest of ways. You change, but somehow, at your core, you remain the same. You move forward, but you carry versions of yourself from the past along. And just when you think you’ve got it figured out, life reminds you that you’re only just beginning. And that’s perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned in my time here, to embrace change and coexist with it.

Maybe that’s what makes goodbyes so strange. We think of them as a clean break, a distinct moment of departure, but they are rarely that. Instead, they linger—woven into old routines, inside jokes, and the muscle memory of familiarity. And perhaps that’s why transitions feel so disconnected—because even when something ends, pieces of it continue to echo into what comes next. 

It’s funny how I (and other victims of Meera 9th Block’s ominous blue walls) went from loathing Meera Bhawan to almost feeling sad about leaving it. How can you be desperate to leave a place, only to pine for it once it’s slipping away? How can you yearn for change, only to realize that change is often just a series of quiet losses? How do the very people who once intimidated you become your greatest sources of comfort? And how, despite knowing that everything is fleeting, do we still let ourselves belong?

That’s the thing about Pilani. It doesn’t only grow on you—it grows besides you.

I came here thinking I needed to define myself. That by the time I graduated, I’d have the next five years planned with precision. That didn’t happen. And maybe that’s okay. I have been lost here and I have been found here. I have been homesick, and I have been at home. I have spent days here that felt too long and years that felt too short. I have stood at the edges of my comfort zone and learned, over time, to step beyond them. And that is what I leave with. The understanding to keep moving, not in a straight line, but in a way that allows me to hold onto everything that has made me. 

And in the end, maybe that’s what growth really is. Not about becoming someone entirely new, but about having more clarity about who you truly are. To leave, knowing that a part of us never really does, with the quiet, unshakable feeling that we were here. And that was enough.