Autumn bears a certain something that always escapes even a whittled tongue: a subtle, one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sort of things. This is the precise reason why I love the autumn so much. You have the summer, a unilateral favorite; the spring, running a close second by many opinions, and the winter, dead last if you’re not fond of cold weather. But autumn, I think, is underrated.

A bit of word association here, but when I hear the word autumn, I think of leaves. Red, yellow, green and orange blended together to create what can only be described as one of the most beautiful natural phenomena of the season. It marks the end of an era, the end of summer. When those leaves fall, their end is finite: there is no rewinding that. We can only move forward.

That is what autumn means to me: moving forward.

After being away from Stanford for a few months and finally going home for the first summer that I have had since starting college, I realized I had changed. I knew this would happen, but there were so many discombobulated thoughts and habits that did not reconcile themselves with my past at home to my present and future at Stanford. While I was relieved to be home and in the comforts that I grew up with, I found myself anxious to get back to campus, itching to return to my new friends, my studies and most of all, this very special place.

I knew it would be a new start, and regardless of what was established last year, it would be possible to renew myself. Of course, renewal can happen at any point of time, but the start of a new school year always seems the easiest time to do this.

So, take a walk with a friend, new or old — it won’t matter. Take a stroll around campus and take it all in. Lie beneath the changing trees and consider all the things that you can change. Daydream about all the things that might be coming your way. You can be as realistic or as idealistic as you would like; it won’t matter. The trees that serve as your reality are always going to represent what you know, and those crunchy, fallen leaves represent the process of moving forward.

And so, we move forward. New classes, new faces, new names and new news that are nearly impossible to foresee. Get excited for all those new reasons to pull all-nighters and new people to laugh with. Rest assured that there are no such things as old faces; even they have something new to give you. Even better? You are not old in any sense of the word; even you have something new to give to the world.

This is why I love the autumn. Well, that and all those pumpkin and apple pies that are finally in season! The summer and the spring are fine and dandy, and the winter sometimes has its perks, but the autumn is the most perfect season of them all.

Welcome back to autumn, and welcome to the infinite possibilities you have coming your way.