It’s August in Ithaca, and it feels like the Everglades. It’s humid. It’s muggy. It’s uncomfortable — especially in a temporary housing lounge packed with six people.

But the stifling August heat is deceptive. Deceptive because no one ever mentions how important it is to bring an oscillating fan to a place that gets as much snow as Antarctica every winter and also because the heat masks the true feeling of what the end of August really embodies.

The transition from August to September is many things. It’s the end of summer. Football is back and the countdown to fall break begins. It’s the beginning of school, but out of that sad goodbye to freedom comes a return to South Hill, and the hope that comes with it.

This is the best two weeks of the year because there is nothing this year can’t be. Potential is the key word, and right now anyone can be Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. No dream is unobtainable, no pot of gold unreachable.

You want that 3.5 GPA? It’s yours. You want to walk around campus like Ron Jeremy? Do it. You want to be an NCAA Division III champion? You’re only a few wins away.

It’s not important that by May, you’ll probably be scraping by with a 2.3 and wake up most Sunday mornings covered in bleu cheese next to an empty D.P. Dough box. And don’t be surprised if the one and only NCAA Championship banner we raise belongs to women’s crew. But these are minor details.

This fall will see the football team trying to end a two-year Cortaca Jug losing streak. The softball team, for the third year in a row, will head into March thinking national championship or bust, and the field hockey team is all about tallying their first .500 season since 2002. As of Aug. 30, all these dreams are shatter-proof.    

Off the field, freshman guys have no idea that every girl they meet is more interested in anyone who graduates before 2011. Seniors don’t want to think about next July when they’re living in their parents’ basement with no real job prospects.

What is real, though, is the sense of hope that 6,409 kids are bringing to Ithaca College this week, hope that this year will be the best year ever. And as cliché and annoyingly predictable as it sounds, it’s the truth.

Because this will be the best year ever. That is, of course, until it actually starts.