As a graduating senior, I am often asked to advise college freshmen. Indeed, often this very type of column is used for just that purpose. Yet I can say unassuredly that this is perhaps the most awkward experience. Equally awkward is the often-heard question, “What do you feel about graduating?” My usual response is some variation of “I don’t know” followed by the very curt reply “excited and nervous.”

It was a question of this very vein that I was asked the other day following the very last meeting of another club I was in. As I ran for the bus, a freshman who had known me through the club ran up to me as if to convey a message of the utmost urgency. “How do you feel … you know, as a senior, since it is your last meeting?” I shrugged it off, saying that it wasn’t really my last meeting and that I would see many of the club members before I graduated. She then thanked me and, by extension, all seniors for making the club a welcoming place.

It was this sense of admiration that I guess had been lost on me in all the momentum of being a senior. That is the very idea of being a torch-giver, an elder, so to speak, from whom any valuable sage advice could be obtained, an idea that is and has been foreign to me. In high school, I was never asked for any advice any counsel. I was and often still see myself as the quiet kid in the corner — a negligible impact.

I guess that is my greatest lesson from college — that negligibility is subjective. The most often said advice in these columns is some form of the following: “Take advantage of every opportunity” and “college goes by fast.” I certainly remember hearing this advice in my freshman year. Yet what I feel is an often missed corollary is to not just forgive yourself but to acknowledge one’s own lack of control. I say this because I was one of the weird kids who heard that often-cliche advice and took it seriously. I told myself I would not be as I was in high school — that I would make a name for myself.

This goal was reinforced by the image of college, often displayed as “the best years.” In popular culture, it is common to see adults reminisce about their college experience as the time that they were most alive, most free and most happy. Thus from a young age I was conditioned to subconsciously see the end of college as the converse, as death, a prison, a segue into decline. To be honest, subconsciously, I feel some version of that now in writing this paper — a paper that feels like writing an obituary to the life I once knew. A lasting record to a college life filled with a mix of failures and successes that could not possibly be summed up as the best years of my entire life. However, nor should it, after all, I have my whole life to have my best years, don’t I?

You cannot control your college experience and you cannot possibly have “the best times of your life,” but that’s OK. In fact, I would go as much as to feel sorry for those for which college is the aforementioned. Instead, I’ll say this: Enjoy the ride, not because it’s so fast and will only happen once, but because it’s fun in it of itself. I’ll make a couple of sweeping guarantees you will certainly learn a lot about yourself and others. This includes both the good and bad about both. You will certainly (hopefully) grow as a person, but that learning and growing does not have an expiration date. The best experiences was for me experiences that I didn’t plan out but truly lived.

In addition to my experiences with Pipe Dream, I have been deeply involved with WHRW, our student radio. In four years, I have had the honor of being a radio DJ, hosting my very own show “PANTONAL,” and a talk show host of “Real Talk.” Yet none of that came naturally. It all began by me seeing a flyer for the radio GIM and then not only apprenticing once but twice to become a DJ, a task which I undertook because I truly loved my experience as an apprentice.

I joined my other club, Binghamton College Democrats, for a similar reason. As I kept going to meetings, I eventually became the club’s secretary and political director. That position would in turn, allow me to parlay into becoming the political director of the statewide College Democrats of New York. I also happened to meet one of my closest friends by chance here. He, I and the then-Binghamton College Democrats president were the only ones to show up to an election night canvass.

Heck, even my second minor came about by chance. I minored in global studies in addition to history because it fit well with my vision of studying abroad, but in following the global studies sequence, I was also able to present a capstone project on a unique project of cultural interest: “The relationship between the British Empire and British right-wing populism today.” My study abroad experience was filled with much growth but what has stood out to me most were the spontaneous exchanges: the night I spent in Leipzig staying up all night talking about the differences between American and German culture over a few rounds of lager in a sleazy pub and the time in Prague where I managed to hold a conversation in Spanish between me, some Spanish tourists and a Czech native while waiting in a tram.

I am not much of a believer in predestination, but I have learned to reconcile my need for control with a profound realization. College is a mixed bag, but that’s what makes the good moments that much more memorable and the connections I have made that much more meaningful.

My own experience with Pipe Dream has led me to bounce around the Opinions, News and, finally, Video sections. I have had highs and lows with Pipe Dream, but I will always treasure the memories I have made here and the ability to, as with other clubs, engage with something higher than myself. I guess that’s what that wise freshman girl was alluding to in that run-in as I was running to the bus. Two words have often been used to describe this profound realization: solipsism — that the universe revolves around oneself — and sonder — that everyone’s life is just as complex as your own.

Perhaps it is selfish of me to call the end of my own college years a death and this column an obituary, to shrug off my own counsel. Perhaps, just perhaps, my college experience, this column will allow others to better savor not necessarily their best years but their college years — the good, the bad and everything in between. Thank you, Binghamton, for an amazing, profound but not life-altering experience. Here’s to the next best years!

Peter Levy. a senior majoring in political science, is a staff videographer.