I’m sitting here in the comforts of my own dining room/makeshift home office sipping a homemade peanut butter-strawberry-banana smoothie, eating Cincinnati’s famous Skyline chili (weird combo?) and generally enjoying life, wondering why I’m counting down the days until my return to the Hill (20!).

This summer, I’ve had it made. It started by me snagging one of those how’d-I-get-this-again? summer internships as an editorial intern for Cincinnati Magazine—a job that I enjoy so much, I could only love it more if they paid me…anything. Then I tried to get a paying part-time job to offset my dining out, shopping and being newly 21 expenses, but apparently no one wants to hire for a two-and-a-half-month stint. Thanks to the economy, I had a built-in excuse to spend non-internship days by the pool, and I had free weekends to visit my friends in Indiana.

This all would have gone more swimmingly if I had a bit more money left over from abroad, but by living frugally, not having a car (horrible experience) and moving home for the first summer since freshman year, I somehow made it financially—and mentally—to the last few weeks of the season.

So, it’s been fun, Cincinnati, but you’ve reminded me why I need to leave this city when I graduate. I’m so excited for school to start, I feel like my 13-year-old sister who bought her school supplies in a frenzy midway through July. This seems odd to me considering I wanted to transfer halfway through my first year and still hate the cold. But last fall, I really fell in love with Colby. It was the perfect semester. I lived with my three best friends, started becoming actual friends with my Echo coworkers/partners in crime, branched out to my neighbors and managed to only severely sprain my ankle rather than break it. I was on my way to having a banner year, but then I went abroad.

Living in Bologna, Italy for five months was nothing like I expected. The natives didn’t speak English, so I had to become “fluent,” live with Italian students and take all my coursework in Italian. I hated it, at first. In fact, I wanted to come back to Colby in time for spring semester to start. I thought that Colby was what I missed, but that couldn’t have been it. All of my friends—literally, my six closest friends—were abroad, too, so there was nothing to go back to.

Sure, the English department is great, but I wasn’t going to hang out with Sadoff’s latest brutally graded essay on a Friday night. I’m glad I didn’t come home. Italy and all its associated traveling turned out to be the best experience of my life—typical abroad story, I know, sorry.

I appreciate it more now that I’m back in Ohio, living an easy (but dull) life. And when I reunite with all my friends in the fall, it’s going to be that much better. Preparing to create the Orientation issue of the Echo this summer has made me stoked for being co-editors with Allie, one of my best friends, as well. I love all the editors on our staff—probably because I’ve had an overwhelming affection for the senior class as of late—and I can’t believe I missed them and our loooong Tuesday nights this much.

I know that as soon as classes start, and we all get back into the same boring routine, I’ll be humming a different tune, still out of key. But then I’ll remember that we have pub nights, senior apartments, spring break trips and senior week to look forward to, and the only thing that can possibly be bad about this year is that it’s the last one.