April is the month most of us simultaneously really enjoy and absolutely loathe. We start appreciating the wonder of the world again while also being dragged down as nervous wrecks. Here are the main reasons, as I see them, for this collective turmoil:
April is when spring comes into full, vibrant bloom (in the Northern Hemisphere, that is); the warm sunshine, longer days, pretty blossoms and adorable baby ducklings make everyone open up along with the environment and walk with a little more bounce in their step. Particularly on a college campus, you start seeing what seems like the entire student body emerge from hibernation and start up their Frisbee tosses and soccer-ball-kicking on the fields, while hammocks stretch between trees and all the sprinkled-about picnic tables are occupied with students lounging and doing homework.
Unfortunately, that last idea, the homework idea, is what always derails the fuller sense of bliss that this time of year has the potential to bring. See, while all this lovely spring stuff is happening, us students are also loaded with school work, dealing with midterms and finals preparation and end-of-semester projects and exams. For most of us, any time we sit down on the grass to absentmindedly strum the guitar (OK, maybe that’s a pretty specific example, but you get the point), we can’t erase the nagging feeling that we should be finishing (or starting) that reading / essay / studying. It’s full-steam-ahead until finals week — which, for my school, comes near the end of May, so April feels like somewhat of a paradoxically hectic long haul.
On top of that, April is the end of application season for a lot of things — a.k.a. the deadline for figuring out exactly what you’re doing with the next stage of your life. It’s when high school seniors who have applied to college are waiting to hear final words from schools and then need to decide the one place they want to spend the majority of their time and energy for the next few years. It’s when college graduates hear back about whether or not they’re going to have a tangible professional trajectory and be able to start the next phase of their lives with a position or program somewhere. It’s when students all over hear back about summer internships and / or funding and logistics for said internships.
Also, on college campuses, the general schedule of events becomes inordinately packed with everything various groups have planned on doing but are just now realizing that they’re running out of time to do. As a musician, this is when literally everyone’s senior recital and final concert is, so I’m either running around rehearsing and playing for different performances or attending the events of close friends who I want to support. For me, it’s a fulfilling type of busy and I love it, but it requires a lot of practicing that I’m not always motivated to do.
This year, I’m lucky to have already finished my main academic project for the semester, but I’m still feeling the collective tension brought on by this combination of increasingly lovely weather and excitement for summer and increasingly hectic academic and extracurricular loads. I remind myself, however, that it will be over before I know it, and when it is, part of me is going to feel that emptiness that another school year has completely ended — and it’s going to hit home even more that I’m getting closer to the actual end of my college career.
