It's weird being a senior in college.
I think part of the weirdness is how different it is from being a senior in high school. In high school, all of your friends were there and everyone was mostly heading towards the same direction of applying to colleges and then attending X college. We all went to prom, signed each other's yearbooks, walked down the stage thinking don't trip the entire time, and graduated together.
However, in college, that couldn't be further from the truth. Some friends are graduating a semester early. Other people interned last year so they won't be graduating next spring. Others are interning this year so they also won't be graduating next spring. People are applying for jobs or graduate school or exploring gap years or still deciding. We might have all started out as the Class of 2022, but that's not the reality.
It's scary thinking that my family of friends will never be in the same place anymore. At least, not like this. The nights where each of us takes our comfy spot in the common room, eating (always eating:), existing together, and talking for hours. At the same time, it's super exciting getting a front-row seat to each other's lives and seeing where everyone ends up pursuing their passions. [I might be more excited than them, can you tell?]
I honestly love my friends and I am so grateful to have them in my life. With every high and low these past 3 years or so and even with the pandemic marring more than half of our college experience, we've made the best of it together.
You end up taking a lot of classes in college. Sometimes you wonder why you're taking them. Usually, they're only a semester-long so you forget about it and get on with your life. College is great at teaching you to move on with your academic life. The semesters fly back so quickly, you barely have time to process what you even learned when you're signing up for the next semester.
However, college doesn't do a good job of teaching you how to move on with your life personally. There's no class on the art of moving on from semi-adulting to being an actual adult. Living away from your parents and living completely alone in a new city with no more college friends is not in a syllabus. It's sort of like when people throw babies into the pool and expect them to swim because chilling in your mother's womb is totally the same. In college, they give you your diploma, you take the pictures, and then it's over. You're probably back in your parent's house for a hot minute in-between whatever you're doing and that's when you get a moment to think: what the heck just happened???
No more emails from clubs you signed up freshman year, but never participated. No more weekly COVID updates. No more campus emergency texts and phone calls at 3 am. No more having your friends down the hall to give you a command strip when your poster falls for the hundredth time. No more late-night baking sprees with Taylor blasting and second dinners of ramen.
And yes, this hasn't happened to me...yet. I'm still a "senior" so I guess we'll see how that pans out. I hope everyone's doing okay while the weather figures out whether it is finally fall or still summer. [Personally, I think Starbucks started their pumpkin spice campaign too early this year and I'm in Ohio.]
The ~Moving On~ Playlist:
1) Clean-Taylor Swift (Album:1989)
