The reality of having to write an article is hitting me pretty hard.

Sitting here scribbling this last-minute masterpiece (it’s now about an hour until my deadline) is like smacking myself in the face with a big ogre-sized hand that belongs to someone (probably my editor) screaming, ‘Welcome back to real life!’

Even though last Monday already slammed me with a 10:50 a.m. class, it feels like that was just a practice run. This week is when the spine of my ‘Yoga: Learning the Basics’ class will be broken.

So, yeah, my 10:50 class is yoga. But that doesn’t make it any less challenging to get up and out of my bed in the morning. Living Downtown is like living on a whole new planet, one that makes it even harder to recognize that I’m living in Binghamton to go to school, not to sit in my apartment all day making different Miis on my Wii.

Maybe I have only myself to blame since I spent our bizarre vacation holed up in Binghamton. With my apartment conveniently located one block away from State Street, my week consisted of boozin’ and not much else.

Secretly though, I’m happy to return to structure. We have been spoiled by the fortuitous timing of Labor Day and Rosh Hashanah (Happy New Year!), but now it’s time for muscle memory to take over and remind us that we are students.

Freshmen, you don’t have the same advantage that I do. In my eyes, the campus is familiar, not foreign, and our first week back let me blindly go through the motions of getting to class, downloading syllabi and ordering textbooks.

For you Binghamton babies, the timing of the holidays was not quite so pleasant, and you were kicked out of the dorms which so recently became your new homes. This week will bring out the true colors of Binghamton’s academic and social life.

Consequently, diving into the culture of the eclectic and unpredictable world of Binghamton will finally make a college kid out of you. It’s all in the semantics. The transition from calling your instructors ‘teachers’ to ‘professors’ is a fantastic, yet unsettling, feeling that will make you feel a little too old and on top of the world all at the same time.

To be honest, I’m a little jealous of you bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshmen joining our campus this year. I hope you’re eager, because Binghamton needs some revival after last year.

I’m kind of rambling ‘ I apologize. But I mean everything I’ve said. If I keep talking about the prospect of diving back into printing e-reserves on the daily, I might lose my mind. Thus, my attention has turned to the freshmen of our beloved institution.

I can’t help it. Even if you won’t take my advice, I’m going to give it to you. Be real people. Be real students. Work hard and play hard, and don’t let my use of that clich√É© turn you away from some good counsel.

Now that I’ve gone and embarrassed myself by letting you peek into this incoherent monologue rapidly developed in my brain, I hope you feel a little relief ‘ whether it’s because you don’t feel like a real person yet either, or because you’re a freshman who doesn’t yet know what it’s like.

Even if we’re not ready for it, I hope Binghamton is ready for us.