Have you ever run into an ex and witnessed first hand that what you two once had is going on just as it had before, except this time, without you? It continues, even better than it did when you were involved. Unpleasant at best, but dismal more than anything else.

Well luckily I didn’t run into any ex’s today. In fact, that hasn’t happened to me yet (and I’d like to keep it that way). But an almost parallel situation unraveled before me tonight, and like it or not, here I am writing.

Tonight happened to be the ASCE Spring Faculty Student Social, a complicated event to plan, but one of the most rewarding to experience after planning it. This Faculty Student Social, like the one the year prior, and the one before that, the best social to date. Well planned, well executed, well done.

But it was the meeting afterwards, the first meeting of the ASCE Alumni Advisory Board, that put me in my current state. The board consists of past ASCE officers (mostly from my years of service) coming together to provide current ASCE officers with insight and advice on how to improve ASCE.

The details don’t matter as much as the situation itself: here I was, on the 7th floor of Davis Hall, once again meeting with a group that was an undeniable (and unbelievably significant) part of my life for the four years of my undergraduate education. Surrounded by those that continually surrounded me back in those four years, I once again heard the voices of a group of people devoting their time, energy, and sanity toward a simple but worthy common goal - helping others.

Although it was absent in the course of the meeting, the somber duality of that gathering hit me the second I walked out of the building. It was only then, on my moonlit walk back to my car that I understood just how large a part of my life ASCE was, and just how large a hole it left when it ended for me. Since my involvement, the organization has grown, matured, and prospered in ways that I could not have imagined, and their invitation to this meeting meant more to me than they will probably know.

Tonight allowed me to once again give back, to work together with people that I genuinely care about and respect. And sitting there, offering advice and helping make decisions brought a smile to my face that I hadn’t shown in quite a while. But the sobering truth of that meeting was that those days are now over, and little exists to bring them back.

Indeed everything has its proper time, place, and end, yet here I am again, faced with just another example of my voluntary exit from a situation which likely improved with my withdrawal, but left me missing that which I had lost.