The Berkeley that many of us first encountered as freshmen in August 2010 is in many ways radically different than the one next year’s freshmen will discover in a few months.

Much of the student body that was present in fall 2010 has since graduated or left. Memorial Stadium hadn’t even closed for renovation, much less reopened, and Eshleman Hall was still standing. Lower Sproul Plaza and the student union building were completely open. Janet Napolitano was the secretary of Homeland Security and had probably never thought about one day running the UC system amid controversy.

We were only wide-eyed new students then. We ate sandwiches at Cafe Intermezzo and baffled at the fact that there were two Subways within walking distance of each other — one on campus, the other across the street. We watched as others went to “Beat the Clock” at a campus bar that no longer exists.

Since then, Berkeley has changed, but its ethos remains the same.

As we head into our last finals and finish our last papers, it’s understandable that a lot of us will be looking back at everything that happened, everything we did, over the past few years. We’ll wonder how much we learned, if everything was worth it or if we even left a mark. But at this point, we should all just be grateful to have made it this far.

This graduation special issue is permeated with nostalgia. Hopefully, when taken together, the perspectives published here reflect something relevant about our campus at this time.

In any case, to all those who are graduating this month, be proud of the work you did to get this far. We have received one of the best college educations that the world has to offer. To achieve that, we were resilient. We were lucky. We were here.

JD Morris, 2013-2014 managing editor and Sarah Burns, 2013-2014 editor in chief