Last week someone’s jaw dropped when they learned that I’m in third year. Suddenly they wanted to know everything about me: What I’m studying, where I’m from, and if I’m sure I’ve been at McGill for two full years already. 

What I find startling is that whenever people are floored by what year I’m in, their disbelief is founded in the same faulty logic: That I am too full of life to be anything but a froshie.

I admit I have more energy than most; the secret to this youthful facade isn’t an inordinate amount of caffeine, but rather an inordinate amount of love.

I made it a rule a number of years ago to fall in love every day. Not ‘lawfully-wedded-wife’ love; something smaller, but no less real. Some days it’s a perfect pair of brown suede boots I spot on campus. Other days, a stranger who holds the door. Today, the perfectly ripe plum I had as a snack and the way my friends piled into the DESA office to spend time with me during my office hours. 

Even if I achieve nothing else in any given 24 hours, every day I find something to love.

I’ve been told that I use the word ‘love’ too liberally. I fundamentally disagree. There is so much love to have, to share, and to hold that I can’t come up with a single reason to hoard it in the crevices of my heart. 

So yes. I love loudly and I love too much. I let love spill through the cracks in my soul because I love the way it tastes on my breath. I love entirely and wholly and endlessly and daily and I do not care if it is disconcerting. I am a kid and the world is my candy store. Sue me.

I love waiting in slow-moving lines with my friends, just to buy overpriced coffee to drink together while we commiserate. I love bathroom graffiti and reading the messages that have been painted over and re-written with endless dedication and resilience. I love experiencing world-shattering heartbreak, because when love ends, heartbreak is the proof it was there to begin with—I feel so lucky to have gotten to experience something so profound, even if, in hindsight, it was never meant to last.

This love keeps me grounded, and it takes many forms: Appreciating the ordinary, romanticizing the mundane, and, most importantly, pulling glimmering silver linings out of seas of grey. Sparkles are often the only difference between the gorgeous and the grotesque, so to think of them as childish seems silly: I firmly believe that no matter how old you are, sparkles can help. There is always a glittering silver lining to be found, even if you have to paint it on yourself.

I won’t pretend love is a catch-all solution. My insistence on retaining a love for the utterly unremarkable doesn’t grant me immunity from the realities of university life. Just because I love love doesn’t mean I’m always just-peachy; my friends have wiped my tears and eaten pints of ice cream straight from the carton with me.

However, there is something to be said about letting the world excite you; about treating so-called ‘frivolous’ love as something adult rather than something naive. If love is what makes life beautiful, why on earth should we ever stop looking for it? 

Love doesn’t happen all on its own, but that’s what makes it worth it. Sifting through the unremarkable and finding something beautiful is a beautiful act in and of itself; love is formed and found where you look for it.

So I collect it.

I pick love like berries and spread it on my toast every morning; I use it to sweeten my tea; I wear it as perfume. It fills my days with life and lore, and, apparently, disguises me as a first-year. 

While I do wish people could guess my age a little more accurately, there is, as always, something to love in this misconception: It proves that whatever life is lost between first year and third year can—with enough looking and enough love—always be found.