You know that nostalgic feeling you get when you listen to an old song from your teen years that you love. Its this feeling of happiness, sadness, heartbreak and love all wrapped into one. It is almost indescribable. You know its reminiscent of a moment you adored from a different stage in your life when you were a totally different person with totally different ambitions and totally different interests. Well today was my “teen song”. Today was that day where I felt every single emotion possible and I had this feeling of happiness, sadness, heartbreak and love all wrapped into one. What triggered this feeling today was the election of a first year rep in a society. I already know what everyone is thinking… how much does this boy love society life and why is he still caught up on being first year rep. To be honest with you all, I have never been overly good at vocalising my emotions. I think I maybe cry about three or four times a year. I find it very difficult to put things into words, but thought that I better try and do it this one time. You see, It is not that I am caught up on my society, but I am caught up in a single moment that changed my life. 

I think everyone has that moment that could have put their life on a totally different course if it had have went another direction. I have thought about this moment pretty much every single day for the last three months. In the moment that I got first year rep, I would never have been able to imagine what it would do to me AND for me. I finally feel like I am being myself and being accepted for all of my weird habits and interests. These are the kind of weird habits and interests that before I started college were something that I generally hid from people, but now I understand the importance of them. The parts of myself that I always felt necessary to hide from other people were suddenly the parts of me that were being celebrated. From that exact moment in my life, I got put in the middle of a group of people who had to work extremely close with each other every single day. Each person with their own weird habits and interests. The society meant that we all had one thing in common, but I think in reflection it was the stuff we didn’t have in common that made us so close. 

I spent the entire year with brand new types of people – A girl who embodied every mother ever, a boy from Clane who cannot be serious about anything, too many girls from Donegal, the whitest radio DJ known to man, a girl from Carlow with some of the worst clothes I have ever seen, a boy from Drogheda who drives me insane at the best of times- and so many others, each with their own weird habits and interests. I love them all to death and find it difficult and almost scary to imagine where I would be without them all. 

Today in that moment when I witnessed the election of a new first year rep, I felt that same feeling of a song being played from my early teen years. I thought about how if I had never went to that event last year; if I had never went for the position that I did, how it would have totally changed my life. I thought about each person I’ve grown to love in the last year. These people with their own weird habits and interests. The people who have made me feel emotions like I never have before. The people that filled me with Happiness, sadness, heartbreak and love. A feeling of a time in my life that I adored - when I was a totally different person, with totally different ambitions and totally different interests.

By Dylan McClorey