I really meant to do something with my summer. Working merely five hours a day as a day camp counselor leaves free time. With all this time, I meant to accomplish a whole “list of things to do” before college started. About two weeks after high school graduation, my friend who doesn’t normally watch TV and I were sitting in my basement when she insisted that I start watching “Lost.” She was six episodes in, and thoroughly addicted. I grudgingly began to watch (every season of “Lost” is available on http://beta.abc.go.com/), and as much as I didn’t want it to happen, I immediately became hooked on a show about people whose plane crashes on an untraceable, tropical island inhabited by smoke monsters, polar bears, magical healing powers, a button that keeps the world from ending and “The Others,” who may or may not intend to kill the survivors.

This intense addiction caused my eyes to burn from prolonged screen exposure and filled my brain with the intricate storylines, cliffhangers and most recently, time travel. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but it only took me a month and a half to complete all five seasons (roughly 4,430 minutes, or 74 hours, of TV).

As I continued to go about my life, I saw people who resembled the show’s characters everywhere, and both mine and my friend’s text inboxes were constantly full (of course we would never say any of this out loud). “OMG, there’s a guy who looks exactly like John Locke (Terry O’Quinn) in the car next to me,” “I think Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) is painting my house!” and “Ahhh, Kate (Evangeline Lilly) works at Starbucks!”

And this wasn’t just during the day. I was suddenly a wild sleeper, waking up with no blankets or sheets on my bed and with my pillow shoved up against the wall. What was I dreaming of, you ask? In my slumber, I was desperately attempting an island escape, alongside the characters who seemed to appear everywhere.

All of our friends thought we were insane, but addicted is addicted (in my defense, I did warn her this would most likely happen if I began to watch the show).

On my recent trip to school, I made my way through the airport thinking, “I wonder if my plane will land in St. Louis or crash on a mysterious island in the middle of nowhere?” As I thought this, my phone vibrated, alerting me I had a new text. Flipping open the phone, I read, “I hope you have a pleasant, very un-Lostish plane ride and land safely in your destination.”

Now what? I’m here (the plane ride was extremely ordinary), but am I ready for college? Remember that long “list of things to do” from June? It only has about two things crossed off of it.