In three months, I'll be gone. I realized that the other day when an envelope filled with commencement information met me at the mailbox. It was a sign of my collegiate mortality.

And when I opened that envelope, and read such dry material about how exactly Notre Dame is going to kick me out, I began to cry.

It wasn't a sob event. It was just a small trickle, enough to make me notice a change in my emotional well-being, but not so much that I couldn't weasel my way out of explaining why there was a tear running down my cheek. (It was a piece of dirt, I would probably say.)

Anyway, I suppose it's just the sentimentalist who's been hiding deep down in my soul for such a long time. I've never pretended not to be a sensitive person. But I've never pretended to be a big fan of loving Notre Dame and everything attached to it.

I've visited the Grotto when I needed spiritual mending. I visited the Main Building when it reopened. I went to all the home football games.

But really, I would have made those trips if I were at any other school. It was really my spirituality, my curiousity and my interest in sports that instigated them.

So why did I cry when I discovered that I was on my last leg at good ol' Notre Dame?

It's because everything I thought was important in my life was somehow infected by this place. I've been here for three and a half years already. And I've grown attached to it.

Don't get me wrong. I don't regret coming to Notre Dame. I'm glad I made the decision to attend the only school to which I applied, and which accepted me.

But did I expect Notre Dame to fully become part of my psychological being? I never really took advantage of everything Notre Dame boasts offering its students. I never took part in any extracurricular activities aside from the marching band (which helped me get into the football games for free) and The Observer (which I consider more of a job). I just didn't embrace Notre Dame.

But now, I find myself trying to wring everything that is Notre Dame out of my brain. I don't want to cry when my parents come back to South Bend for the first time since freshman orientation.

I don't want to cry when I sit with my fellow Domers at the commencement Mass or at actual commencement.

I'd much rather consider these last four years as just another four years in my long life. Why can't Notre Dame be a place instead of a lifestyle?

But, for some reason, I don't think that'll happen.

That's why I was offended when everyone lashed out against the newly corrupted Notre Dame student body last week for the action of a single "waterboy" whom I've forgiven already. (I didn't care much in the first place.)

So, though, I'll probably be crying my eyes out come mid-May, I know that soon after, when I leave this place, I'll be crying my eyes out about how I don't have a good job, no future and a new life I'm not too sure about loving.

• It's just a place, right?