Right now, the fall semester of the year 2020 is about to end and I am a senior looking to graduate within half a year, looking back to the diverse experiences I had at Auburn truly brings back my memories. 

For starters, I came to this institution with the hope that I could recover from the damage I had done with a 1.7 GPA since I was studying pre-med at the previous school and I dropped out because I could not understand a single medical term. Auburn gave me the feeling of being welcomed from the start. When I first stepped on campus the buildings here were drastically different than that of my previous school in Massachusetts despite some buildings such as Samford hall and Comer hall are similar to the traditional style of buildings of early America. Students and faculty seemed occupied as they hurriedly walked past our orientation group, I did not know where my classroom is so I stopped and asked a person who was having breakfast on a bench if he knew where it was. He pointed out that it is situated in a specific part of the building and you can only access it from the back door, he even drew a diagram to guide me through the steps. When he was sure that I would not be lost again, he continued on with his breakfast. That day around noon I went to the Korean restaurant across from Samford hall to have lunch with a couple of my friends, the little joint was called Seoul BBQ, and I could still remember that it had the most amazing chicken soup I have ever tasted. It was also where me and my ex first found one another. As time went by the original ground where the restaurant used to be now stands a branch of the BBVA bank, symbolizing the transformation of the economic structure of Auburn.

            This is just one example of the change in Auburn, another one would be the rerouting of tiger transit. I have been here long enough to remember the time when West campus line still went through the apartments on magnolia avenue, when I was still in Auburn global housing at the Grove, I would take the tiger transit to school with 3-4 stops along the way. Students from different communities on magnolia avenue would either wait patiently for the bus or run consistently to catch the bus. It was a scene which I would never forget. However, since the introduction of the new route for West campus line, students who lived on magnolia avenue after the complex of Logan Square often found themselves driving to school since another unfamiliar line had replaced the West campus line. This change in transit service is to accommodate people who are living near the Grove but have no basic transportation. Time is the only continuum to measure the progress of change within a society, people change, so do cities. It is always good to change and adapt to a new environment and a new standard of living. 

Auburn is a college town with a spirit, but part of that spirit was based on slavery. The correct way to address such an issue is to work with the African American community in thoughtfully changing the Auburn landscape to a racist free society. Not just by tearing down buildings or altering their names to fit certain regulations. I look forward to seeing more change done over Auburn and the university campus.