I’ve never been more ready to move on.

I felt like I was escaping from prison.

In the car, fleeing campus at the end of my sophomore year of college, I got a legitimate adrenaline jolt, because a part of me couldn’t believe that this long, arduous year was finally drawing to a close. 12 months earlier, I’d pulled away from my freshman dorm feeling positive about college and extremely hopeful about the summer to come. Now, I wondered in the back of my mind whether I’d ever come back to this school again. Why had that one year made such a difference?

Fortunately, I still had a lot of hope for the summertime. For months, I’d had this day circled on the calendar, a mental “finish line” where everything that had been out of whack in my life would click back into place. I’d go back home; my girlfriend Jillian and I would be reunited; I’d go back to the summer job I loved, performing at the local dinner theater; winter would finally lose its oppressive hold on Michigan and I’d get to roll down the car windows and feel the wind blow back my hair as I blasted summertime songs on the stereo.

I even already had a summertime soundtrack picked out. On March 22, 2011, Yellowcard, one of the preeminent “summer soundtrack” bands of my youth, had released their first new album in four years. Called When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes, the album was packed with big anthems that were begging for precisely the type of windows-down car rides I mentioned above. There’s even a song on that album, called “With You Around,” where the chorus goes “All I can think about is you and me driving with a Saves the Day record on/We were singing ’til our voices were gone.” I listened to that album on repeat during my final month of sophomore year, trying to will summertime to get here a little faster, because I’d never needed it more.