As the new semester begins, students prepare to get back to a normal routine, but for friends of Julia Kathryn Gilbert, the normal routine will be harder to fall into.

Gilbert, French education senior and member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, was reported missing Jan. 8 and later found dead in her overturned silver 2002 Volkswagen Jetta Jan. 10.

“Her life was short, but it was full,” said Reverend John Metzinger, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church pastor during Gilbert’s funeral Mass.

“Julia was everything you could want in a best friend, student and person,” said Taurie Fraser, radiation therapy senior. “I will miss her every day.”

The attendance of more than 600 people at Gilbert’s funeral was “proof of her ability to make friends wherever she went,” said Andy Collins, Gilbert’s friend.

Friends remembered Gilbert as someone who loved to have fun, was passionate and who loved to play practical jokes on friends.

Fraser, Gilbert’s friend since middle school, said one of Gilbert’s favorite practical jokes was to give out Fraser’s phone number to people because it was one of the only numbers she had still memorized.

Erica Pletan, international and area studies senior, who met Gilbert two summers ago while studying abroad in France, said Gilbert had a lot of passion that was hard to ignore.

“Julia had an ability to just make friends so easily and we hit it off right away,” Pletan said. “I hadn’t known anyone when I was studying abroad, but she just took me under her wing and we became best friends soon after that.”

Gilbert had been at a BCS National Championship watch party at a friend’s house about five miles away from her parents’ house in Edmond and was last seen leaving her friend’s house at 3 a.m. Her vehicle was found almost 18 miles away on Waterloo Road near Council Road.

When she heard her friend had gone missing, Fraser came straight back from her vacation in Colorado to help look for Gilbert.

“When I heard Julia had gone missing, I knew something was wrong,” Fraser said. “Even if she had been angry with her parents and ran off, she would have called me. The thought [of her being dead] had crossed my mind, but I still had hope she was missing.”

As people began calling other friends, trying to find Gilbert, Pletan said she was in a state of disbelief Gilbert was missing and started crying.

“After I calmed down, the first thing I thought to do was, how could we get everyone to know about [Julia’s disappearance] as soon as possible and knew everyone was already on Facebook,” she said.

The Facebook group, now with more than 32,000 members, as of Monday, has become a site where friends of Gilbert come together and share memories of their friend.

“[When I found out about Gilbert’s death], I started screaming ‘no’ over and over again, and I wanted to go and see her but I couldn’t, so I went to be with her parents to comfort them,” Fraser said.

The State Medical Examiner’s office ruled the death as accidental and the cause as an atlanto-occipital dislocation, more commonly known as a neck fracture, said Cherokee Ballard, State Medical Examiner spokeswoman.

Ballard said the medical examiner concluded Gilbert’s death would have been really quick, but there was no real way to tell definitively.

“At this time, [Oklahoma Highway Patrol] knows [Gilbert] was in a car accident, her car overturned when she drove off the road into a ditch and she died from the car crash,” said Capt. Chris West, OHP spokesman.

West said the investigation is still open until the State Medical Examiner’s office has the results to Gilbert’s toxicology report, which can take between a month and six weeks.

In memory of their daughter, John and Laurel Gilbert set up “The Julia Kathryn Gilbert Memorial Fund” to support Lyme disease research and to provide scholarships for French majors at OU.

Having struggled against Lyme disease for more than six months, Gilbert’s friends said Gilbert also struggled with how no one understood or knew what Lyme disease was and wished for more awareness. Fraser said Gilbert went six months undiagnosed because medical professionals were unsure of what it was.