Advice for Day 75: Does Nostalgia have a place in a grown women's heart?

I hear my college roommates groaning even before I write these blaphemous and insanely nostalgic words but I must write them anyway: I miss finals.

I miss eating pokie sticks for dinner a week straight. I miss cramming at Helen C. until my ass cramped. I miss endless cups of coffee that made my taste buds die and my head spin. I miss taking a test and knowing I nailed it, knowing that 3 months of work paid off, that i had something as proof in the end, even if it was just a test.

And i miss that final's end celebratory beer. Nothing tastes as good as 1-12 cheap beers (or boots as my crowd rolled) after your final final.

Maybe it is just my lack of productivity these past 3 months that has me yearning for the fake productivity of college. For three months I have eaten crap with no excuse of final's food cravings. My ass has cramped not from hours studying in cheap wooden desks but from too many Jon and Kate Plus 8 Marathons. And I drink coffee not to learn about civilizations of old and revolutions of tomorrow but simply to try to stay awake in my boring middle America life of today.

And I have no final test to prove that it has been worth anything, that i have learned anything about myself or life in the past 3 months.

Sad but true, what i miss is validation that I am not wasting my life, validation in the form of a test, a paper, a project.

And I am slightly afraid that cheap beer will never taste good anymore...

All I can hope is that this nostalgia is just a part of what I am learning in this grand course of life, that nostalgia is just a little test on my endurance to make myself a future and not live in the past.

Maybe PBR will never taste good again but I am learning there are other beers, more expensive beers, more expensive and probably European beers, that might be waiting on the bar for me in the future.