On a gorgeous April day, my mom, brother and I walked onto campus, me decked out in my white graduation dress and my blue robe, stumbling along in an absurd pair of strappy heels, terrified that I would trip on a brick as I had so often on my way to class. I’m lucky enough to live near campus, though, and that has given me the opportunity to make a few final memories of this place I’ve loved so dearly. I’ll never be a Carolina student again, at least not the way that I was for the past four years. If I’d known, then, how would I have felt? What would it have felt like to sing that song in that place and know for certain that it would be the last time? My last memories of being on campus as a student - running late to class on the last day before spring break, listening to music in the library between work and class - are now my final memories of being at Carolina. Sitting in my bedroom now, the same place I was four years ago as I imagined what my life at Carolina would be like, I attempt to imagine what my own graduation would have looked like next week. Of course, that time came even sooner than I feared it would. I’ve always known that the time would come, far too soon, when I could only go to Carolina in my mind. Listening to it fills me with an incredible sense of connection and pride, but also the feeling that time is running out. Watching Carolina graduates sing in Kenan Stadium, you get the sense that they’re desperately trying to remember it all - the highs and the lows, the ordinary and the extraordinary. You wish you could remember every second of the day-to-day tedium, the routines you made, the way you felt on an ordinary Tuesday in September while walking through the Pit.

You wish you could recreate the experience of being there. “Carolina In My Mind” is a song about wishing you could go back to a place, but not just wishing you could physically be there. That kind of desperate happiness and sadness all mixed into one - a fierce connection to a place and its people. I had yet to set foot in a Carolina classroom, but I remember feeling an ache in my heart. The camera panned over Kenan Stadium as thousands of graduates, decked out in Carolina blue, held hands and cried, and sang along, “Can’t you see the sunshine? Can’t you just feel the moonshine?” One video that I watched over and over was a Clef Hangers performance of “Carolina In My Mind” at graduation. The summer before my first year at Carolina, I sat in my bedroom and watched videos of various Carolina events - Sunset Serenade, basketball games, a cappella concerts.

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Going to carolina in my mind