Another summer came and went, and we all find ourselves back at Athens Drive, home of the orange and blue. And while I walk these halls as a prideful senior, class of 2014, only one stepping stone away from a new way of life at college, why does it not feel different?

I know I cannot be the only one that feels this way. I have walked these crowded halls at Athens for over three years now, just like all the seniors before me and alongside me. Still, something nags on me from the inside, a feeling that I cannot shake. A feeling that senior year is not all it was cracked up to be. I still have to show up to school every day, unless I’m willing to give up my senior exemptions (spoiler alert: I’ll be here every day). I still have to sign up for tough classes to show colleges that I’m not just on a victory lap before I start college, and that entails studying and exams, much like years previous. So, it is senior year, and I find myself sitting at my house trying to do homework, trying to figure out what I’m going to write for a newspaper column. How am I supposed to write about the epiphanies of being a senior and the wonderful year it entails when it feels much the same as years past?

Of course there are the obvious perks: we get to stand in the first rows in the student section at football games, we vote on our homecoming courts and our Gradmen. And of course our spirit hallway will put the other classes to shame. But perks are just that: perks. It’s not a change in life and ways, not a change in how the year itself plays out. For many seniors, the amount of responsibility we must have only increases as we inherit positions of power in clubs and sports. We’re growing older when everyone said this was our last year of being young.

I decided to sit down and write this column after the final season premiere of one of my favorite T.V. shows, as this time of year brings annually. For eight seasons, How I Met Your Mother had entertained me, made me laugh, made me cry (sort of), and now the show was writing the beginning of its end. Strangely enough, I found myself smiling consistently over the hour, even when the jokes weren’t that great or it was a commercial break, and I think I know exactly why.

For the past eight years, I have celebrated the great show that is How I Met Your Mother. I have forged close friendships that are built upon inside jokes and laughs. I have grown with the characters, I have analyzed the relationships, compared them all to my own life and vice-versa. I’ve even written AP English essays about it. But as I watched the characters in their final premiere, I wondered, how is senior year any different?

It has been quite a journey, whether it be three years of high school or eight seasons on T.V., and we have all had plenty of bumps in the path. But even if senior year isn’t the glamour and kicking back that we thought it was, so what? Whether or not this final season of How I Met Your Mother is a masterpiece or a dud, I’m going to love it no matter what, and the reason is simple. It’s because, when you get to a certain point, it’s not the finale that determines how much you love the final product. It’s the love and laughs you shared along the way. It’s the lunch hours we spent terrorizing the local fast food joints; it’s the teachers we no longer refer to as Mr. and Mrs.; it’s the guys and girls that might not always be our friends but will always be memories of our lives in high school.

Senior year is as great as the three school years and summers we spent getting here. Even if they were not great individually (I’m looking at you Season Six), it’s the ride we have all endured together that truly makes us seniors, and that makes us the kings and queens of this… Hold up, How I Met Your Mother is back on.