I love Georgetown in the fall.

Students are clacking about in flip-flops, playing Frisbee on the lawn, waving to old friends. “How was your summer?”How was your summer?”. The air smells of crisp leaves. The sky is bright, clean and limitless.

Fall was when I began my experience at Georgetown. I moved into Village C West with a roommate who appeared to have been matched with me as a joke by the housing office. She was a morning person; I was a night person. She loved R & B; I loved rock. She made her bed every morning; I used my desk as a laundry hamper. But we both had the same sense of humor and in the end, that was all that mattered.

Whenever we opened our windows to get some fresh autumn air, we received a blast of noise and dust from the construction site right across from us. I still can’t believe that that jagged wound in the ground became the Southwest Quadrangle.

In the fall, the trees bend ablaze over the Potomac, and sparks of sunlight dance along the water.

A few weeks after arriving at Georgetown, I stood with other students on the Village A rooftops and watched a real fire across the river. From the area of the Pentagon, black smoke tumbled into the air against a sky of flawless blue. We leaned on the railing in numb silence, in the first few hours of the post-Sept. 11 era.

It should have rained every day that next week, but it didn’t. I had never seen weather so beautiful. The sky was a dumb smile. Birds twittered outside the classroom as my Problem of God professor mused about tragedy and held his head in his hands.

As the months passed, the air grew colder and the leaves withered off the trees. I was reminded that fall is also the season of dying.

Georgetown in winter could be a postcard from any angle. I love walking through Dahlgren Quad in the hush of newly fallen snow. I love the cap of white on John Carroll’s head. I love throwing snowballs in the street, making snowmen on Copley Lawn, or just watching the flakes beat thickly outside the window.

My sophomore year, I ventured knee-deep into life at Georgetown. I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I eagerly took on the job of a news editor at THE HOYA, a role that sounded benign at the time, but later buried my GPA like an avalanche. It was a 9 to 5 job, except it was p.m. to a.m. I hope I enjoy my post-graduate job even half as much.

That year, I also solidified my friendships, fell in love and took on a higher position at THE HOYA.

That’s what you do in winter: dig in deep and surround yourself with warmth.

In the spring, the blanket covering Dahlgren Quad changes from white to pink. The snow melts, the trees blossom, and soon it’s raining cherry blossom petals. The fountain leaps up again, dormant since winter.

I went abroad to France the summer between my sophomore and junior year and traveled to every town in the country with a little culture and a lot of beach. I crossed the border, rode cable cars in Barcelona and toured the Prado in Madrid. I listened to my host mother tell stories of the Nazi occupation over dinners of salmon and wine. In short – and you knew the metaphor was coming – I blossomed.

But spring is also about new beginnings, and that’s where I found myself when I came back to Georgetown. With many of my friends abroad, I joined new clubs, called up old acquaintances and began an internship at a radio station. For spring break, I visited friends in England and Ireland and received, for my trouble, one straight week of gray, drizzly hell.

Georgetown was waiting when I returned, its dazzling spectrum of flowers swaying gently in the mild air.

Summer is almost here now. The leaves on the trees will lose their delicacy and turn dark green. Everything will mature. Everything will come to fruition. All the other seasons were really building towards this point all along, weren’t they?

This year, I have spent fall, winter and spring callously doing everything I love at Georgetown, with no regard as to how fast it would make time go. I roomed with my best friend and enjoyed her company more than ever. My other roommate and I made procrastination into a fine art, baking cookies and watching TV as the hours rolled toward our imminent deadlines.

I went sailing, went to dances and explored D.C. with my boyfriend. I had class with Madeleine Albright. I experienced THE HOYA’s 85th anniversary gala. I went to Puerto Rico with my best friends. Soon, I’ll join my class for Senior Week and graduation.

Everything was building to this. Four years at Georgetown, four seasons at a time.

There isn’t a day of it I won’t miss.

Rebecca Regan-Sachs is a senior in School of Foreign Service. She is a former news editor, features editor, contributing editor and member of THE HOYA’s editorial board.