Goodbye to Ole Miss

By Iqra Saeed

Cultural Exchange Student

It was a rainy night and thunder was booming at almost half past midnight. A girl sitting on the ninth floor in room 951 was looking outside her window, thinking.

She was thinking about the semester she had spent in Oxford, Mississippi. She was thinking about the farewell dinner the Global Engagement Department had arranged for international students. She was thinking about how all the students who attended had expressed mixed emotions.

The students were not only happy to have traveled from their home countries to study at Ole Miss, but also sad because the time had come to say goodbye. Everybody at the dinner tried to make the farewell memorable. Some students exchanged numbers, some took funny pictures at the photo booth, and some made promises to stay in touch forever.

The girl observing all these moments was sad because she knew that it was her last night in this room, the last moments with her friends, but she was jubilant because the time she had spent there was wonderful. The friends she made were irreplaceable, the memories she had made were unforgettable. This is what she was thinking when the clock ticked 3:30 a.m.

At that moment she stood up, walked to her bed and thought, “This is the beginning of the end.”

The girl was me.