Last Sunday, hundreds of prospective students and their families flooded campus, ready to make a decision that would change the next four years of their lives. On that very same Sunday, my friends and I checked one more item off our senior year bucket list: senior pictures. The reality that my four years were coming to an unseemingly quick close hit me instantly.

Standing atop the ledge on the Quad, champagne bottle in hand, I watched as families stopped to take photos in front of the blossoming trees. Clutching their brown paper bags from the Bookstore, they seemed overcome by the thrilling newness of Boston College. They sought entertainment in exploring its pathways and watched the spectacle of five friends drenching themselves in sparkling wine at 1 p.m.

I thought back to the spring before my freshman year, retracing my steps to the afternoon I spent wandering campus with my parents before stopping to take a photo in the exact spot I was now standing. This time, however, I was wearing a long white dress instead of a Bookstore sweatshirt with the tag still attached.

I remembered the messages I’d heard echoed across campus. Stories from panelists about barbecues in the Mods and afternoons spent on the Quad with friends they’d been lucky enough to meet in their freshman dorms.

I remembered how my tour guide had stopped at the top of the Million Dollar Stairs and pointed at a far-off building that had once housed her and her seven best friends.

I remembered watching girls in white dresses parade across campus and feeling lifetimes away from being in their shoes. After all, I had so many great expectations—grand, hopeful, and impossibly specific—to fulfill first.

That fall, I arrived with nothing but a head-in-the-clouds vision of what my next four years would look like. I imagined meeting the perfect friend group in my dorm building, inevitably merging with a group of guys to become the stereotypical, seemingly perfect BC friend group. I pictured forming the perfect eight-man, securing the most picturesque off-campus house, and beating the odds of the housing lottery to land a Mod.

Those first few weeks, I watched as four wedding parties proceeded out of St. Ignatius, the couples surrounded by friends they’d once attended tailgates and studied for exams with. I can’t say that I was thinking as far ahead as marriage at 19, but I imagined that if I were to spend the next four years here, I would, at the very least, find myself one of the BC boyfriends that every upperclassman seemed to have.

The issue with dreaming up great expectations is that it leaves plenty of room for inevitable disappointment.

Four years later, it’s safe to say that my dreams were exactly that: dreams and nothing more. So while my time here hasn’t unfolded in the picture-perfect way that’s subliminally marketed to incoming freshmen, I’m grateful I didn’t rush to fit into this mold and let my imperfect experience unfold on its own.

Aside from my freshman year roommate I still live with today (which is a success story in itself), I didn’t meet my lifelong friends on the first day of freshman year, or even in the first few months. Most of my closest friends are the ones I met halfway through my college experience, usually popping into my life at the most unexpected moments.

As for my housing experience? Probably the furthest possible thing from perfect. Let’s just say I wouldn’t recommend rearranging your eight-man a week before registration or signing a lease for an apartment without double-checking that your key actually works. Sure, I never got the Mod that everyone told me was the “best part of senior year,” but my Ruby quad is home enough for me.

I can also say for certain that I won’t be walking down the aisle in St. Ignatius, and you definitely won’t see my future wedding posted on BC’s Instagram page.

After weaving through a sea of quarter zips and dodging conversations about IB internships for the past four years, I think I’ll survive without checking off the BC boyfriend box before graduation. And who knows, you might meet someone unexpected if you’re willing to break free from the BC bubble we’ve all grown so comfortable within.

If I’ve learned anything in my four years at BC, it’s that time will never align perfectly with the great expectations you dream up.

Maybe you’ll meet friends halfway through your college journey and wish you could have had just a little more time together. Maybe you won’t learn who you actually live well with until your senior year, forcing you to question how much corrosion could have been avoided had you not jumped into arrangements out of convenience. And maybe you’ll finally get a boyfriend in your senior spring, leaving you to wonder why the universe decided to withhold until the very last second.

The great expectations I stepped onto campus with at 19 might not be following me across the graduation stage at 22, but that doesn’t mean my BC experience wasn’t perfect in its own incredibly flawed, yet undoubtedly irreplaceable way.

Don’t let unfulfilled expectations cloud what’s in front of you right now. It might take time and completely turn your expectations upside down, but what’s meant to be will fall into place if you just allow it.