Dear Senior Year,

Holy moly, I’ve made. I am somehow a senior in college. Mom will say that it’s because I’ve worked hard, but I honestly have no idea how I got here. I still feel like I’m about to start my senior year of high school, but we know that is definitely not the case. You are probably getting hundreds of letters this week, filled with everyone’s hopes and goals about how “perfect” and “flawless” you are going to be, but I am afraid that this letter is going to be a bit different. While it is very easy for me to go into that mindset where everything will turn out fine, that is also not the person I am, and that is why I’m going to keep this honest.

So this is the truth about senior year. While I am excited for you, that excitement needs to be clarified. The idea that it gets easier each year is lie, or at least in my case. Okay, navigating campus and easing back into school life does get better each year, as is navigating the party scene, especially with my friends by my side since they are my second family here. Now this is where the lie part comes in. Trying to figure out what the last requirements you need to graduate and calculating your final credits are enough to make you pull out your hair (Thinking of going to the advising office for help? Good luck there.) The promise of having the best year ever combined with the pressure for the senior year to be perfect is astounding. The pressure for the “perfect” senior year is one that I don’t want. I know it won’t be perfect, I’ve had enough failed “new year, new me” attempts to know that how I picture it is not how it will go. I’m not being negative, just real. While you may not be perfect, everything will still be fine. Hopefully.

If I am somehow able to survive the two panic attacks from my textbooks pushing me more into debt, that are also unrentable and causing my orders to be cancelled, from the health office telling me there is a problem with my vaccinations a mere four days before I am to move in and never picking up my calls or answering my emails, or the sick feeling I get when I look at all the meetings and homework I already have lined up for my the first week I am back on campus, then maybe, just maybe, I will be able to go into the Instagram and Pinterest fantasy that is the senior year of college. Maybe then I can forget that in a year’s time, I will be entering the adult world and once again back to square one in my life, where I try to conquer “adulting” and prep myself for what will be a string of failures and rejections before I start to work my way up and the no’s become yes’.

However, there is one thing that I am confident in. As unready as I feel getting ready for you, senior year, I know this means that I am ready. You are unavoidable and I am going to tackle you with everything I have. What happens after you is still up in the air, but I have the entire year to figure it out and hopefully I will, but if I don’t, it is also not the end of the world, which I hope I can remember when it’s starts to feel like it. Bring it on senior year, because ready or not, here you come and it’s about to get all too real.

Sincerely,

The Overly Realistic Senior Who Will Probably Cry At Least Nine Times This Semester Alone