I’ve been finding the approaching date of my graduation infinitely more tolerable thanks to the upcoming matriculation of my younger sister. Having applied early and been accepted to Cornell, she is, needless to say, pretty excited about coming here. Her excitement pales in comparison to mine as I think about the prospect of vicariously living my college days over again. Every time I talk to her, all of the skepticism and bitterness I’ve acquired from four years of writing 15-page papers and nearly getting frostbite seems to melt away, leaving nothing but unbridled enthusiasm along with the kind of Cornell spirit that can only be represented with a large foam finger.

Instantly, I start bombarding her with unsolicited advice and irrelevant Cornell factoids like I’m some sort of tour guide on crack. I tell her about the nicest dorms and warn her not to fall into the same trap I did by requesting Donlon thinking it is “the social dorm” when actually it’s just “the dorm with walls too thin and rooms too small not to get to know your neighbors.”

I explain to her that, despite what she may be told, jungle juice is actually not just juice and jell-o shots are still shots — just jigglier. I even tell her not to worry, Professor. Maas still hasn’t retired even though he’s been “retiring next year” for about a decade. I am consistently overcome by nostalgia as I rattle off mistakes-not-to-make and think about what I would do if given the opportunity to do it all over again.

When I talked to my friends about all of this, they also seemed to relish in the idea of hitting the proverbial refresh button on their college experiences and getting a do-over. We talked about the things we never got around to trying, and, in an act that has begun to feel like tradition for my roommates and me, we made a list. Our bucket list ranged from the classics (e.g. having a rendezvous in the stacks and sledding down libe slope) to some more personal items (e.g. winning a game of flip-cup without cheating and blowing our rape whistles at the top of the clock-tower just to see if any of the Cornell Po-Po actually runs up the steps).

But, as I sat with my best friends laughing about all the things we would go back and do if we could, all the stupid and hilarious mistakes we made throughout the years, and all of the things we would kill to do 20 times over again, I had a disturbingly sentimental thought. If we had, in fact, done anything differently from how we did it, we wouldn’t be here now knowing all we do. If I hadn’t requested to live in the thong-shaped dustbin that is Donlon, for example, then my best friends would never have been JA’d for lighting candles in the dorm on my birthday cake, and I might never have learned that some rules really are just meant to be broken. If we hadn’t been in a prank war with an apartment full of boys, we never would have learned that payback really is a bitch. And if we had never worn Playboy Bunny costumes in the dead of winter, then we would never have learned ... well actually we’re kind of still working on that one.

However, if there’s one thing I’ve taken from all of this, it’s not something that I could pass on to my younger sister. It’s not just about learning life lessons so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes — people inevitably do that anyway. Just because I’ve been through almost four years at Cornell doesn’t mean I’ve got everything figured out. I still don’t know how my life is going to turn out, where I’m going to be next year, or even what I’m doing tomorrow night. What I have learned, though, is that this uncertainty is exactly the part of life that makes everything we do worth it. It’s fun because we don’t know what’s coming. All we can do is get out there, learn from our mistakes and hope for the best. There’s really no need for any do-overs because everything we’ve learned from our lives at Cornell, we’ll take with us wherever we go. And besides all that, I can always just come back and visit my sister.