Last year for Colonials Weekend, I warned you all to hide your booze and bowls. This year, I have a different take. I’m a Senior Washed Up Girl (from here on referred to as #SWUG) with my anxiety levels about finding a job only rising as my time to experience college comes to an end.

I’ve realized that senior year, Colonials Weekend is a precursor: It’s the last time many of our parents will come to Foggy Bottom before we don our caps and gowns.

This October is the dress rehearsal before the big finale, the last chance to show your parents who you are when you’re right here in the heart of your college experience. From Friday to Sunday, why not take them on a tour of your real life? Not just the one you think they want you to have.

For three years, you’ve told them: “I went out last night.” “I’m going to the library.” “I can’t move from my bed, help.”

Behind all of those blanket statements, though, there’s much more greatness than you’ve let on. So, let’s let on. Let’s let our parents not live vicariously through us, but with us. Stop just pointing out the Lincoln Memorial. They know it’s there. What they don’t know is about that time you laid behind it with all of your drunk friends and sang the Star Spangled Banner at the top of your lungs.

Let’s take them to Madhatter and tell them that getting in there makes you feel closer to adulthood than you’ve ever felt before. Let’s show them how many people we can fit in the spinning door at the CVS on M Street. Show your mom where you’ve dodged cars countless nights crossing 23rd Street. Open the cabinet doors under your sink and bear the #SWUG shame of finding at least 23 empty bottles of Yellow Tail. Open another bottle with them.

Show your parents that sitting on your friends’ couches and at the ends of their beds have made you who you are when you’re away from them. Show them how the good ones made you better, and how the questionable ones taught you that having fun can be important as well.

Show them all of the good things at GW that made you almost – but not fully – ready to move forward.

So on Thursday night while we’re drinking $1 beers with mothers and fathers at Madhatter, I’ll wonder if this whole thing was a weird social experiment or just a poetic way to say “make all the last things count.”

At least I’ll know I did.