Like everything good in life, Evanston’s tailgating season came to an end two weeks ago. The early mornings filled with food, friends and drinks will be a distant memory until next year.

Photo Caption: My friends and I (on the left) tailgating together for the last time this football season.

Walking up at 9 a.m. and meeting up with hundreds of other students around the city of Evanston before a game is one of Northwestern’s greatest traditions. It’s something that brings all students together for a couple of hours on gameday.

As an international student, the concept of tailgating was completely foreign to me until I came to Northwestern.  It is one of the great American traditions, and a really fun one at that.

Northwestern hosted its last football game of the season against Wisconsin. Normally this game would’ve had a pretty empty student section; however, the weather forecast was perfect for Saturday. Sunny and 70 degrees in November? This can’t be true. That’s what every Northwestern student thought. And so, when I realized that my phone’s weather app was not lying, I knew that Saturday would be memorable day.

As early as 9 a.m., hundreds of people flooded tailgates around Evanston. From freshmen to seniors, engineers to art majors everyone was out there cheering for the ‘Cats.

One of the things that I like the most about Northwestern is that even though we are a school with 8,000 undergrads, you still recognize many faces as you walk around campus and around town. Saturday was no exception, especially since it was a family weekend at Northwestern. The sight of parents with their families walking around tailgates and remembering their time in college was pretty common throughout the day.

It is after these types of experiences that most of us remember why we chose Northwestern, and why we like it so much.