Becoming a senior in college is like when your waiter brings out the entrée after you’ve only had enough time to eat two bites of the appetizer. You knew this was inevitable, but you barely started the spinach artichoke dip. Now you’re expected to just, what, move on? This is all happening too quickly for you to properly reflect on what you’ve learned from the first course, but you’re excited, so you say, "pass me a fork and bring it on."
Becoming a senior in college is like waiting in line for a roller coaster and thinking you have one full round to wait before it’s your turn, but then some little rascal in front of you chickens out so the gruff announcer points to you and is like, “Hey kid, you’re up.” Even though you were so ready for it and so excited, now you’re sweating like “Who me? No, no it can’t be. I didn’t even have the chance mentally prepare myself. Can someone else go first?”
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Becoming a senior in college is like starting the seventh "Harry Potter" book. The sixth book was exhilarating. It was adventurous. It was everything you wanted and more. But now you are looking across your desk, and suddenly, that seventh and final book is staring intensely into your soul, saying, “this is the beginning of the end.” And okay, yes, that is totally dramatic and sounds like something Voldemort would say, but becoming a senior is kind of scary.
Now, before you barricade yourself in a corner of obscurity and weep while you eat leftover pizza and listen to Green Day’s “Time of Your Life” on repeat, just remember. This is not the beginning of the end.
This is the beginning of the beginning.
So, here we are. Seniors in college.
Wait, what? I thought I was 16 like, five minutes ago.
We have matured since high school. We used to cite Wikipedia articles as a source. Now we cite the sources in Wikipedia articles.
We are seniors. What does this mean? Well for starters, it doesn’t mean we get the senior discount at Bob Evans or that we can live in Four Seasons, an apartment complex located on Kent State University’s campus.
Yes, I did call them to inquire about housing. Yes, I was unaware that it was a retirement community for residents 55 and older.
So, what does this really mean? It means that we survived our wild freshman year when we attended enough ice breakers to fill the Arctic Ocean. We complained often about the bunk beds and ate a lot of dining hall carbs and single-and-mingled our way into too many frat parties, but we gained the Freshman 15.
Maybe it was 15 friends. Maybe it was 15 pounds. Maybe it was 15 parking tickets. Maybe you fell down the stairs at a party in front of the attractive guy who worked at the rec center and maybe you fell in love and maybe he moved to Thailand and maybe you never saw him again.
Anyway, sophomore year we learned about how… well, we got to… ugh, we discovered what…
If freshmen are the bottom of the food chain, then sophomores are the trout. You’re just swimming around and having a good time, but you’re pretty average and nothing really significant happens.
Junior year rocks. You have completed all of your general classes, and finally start realizing you either love your major or you switch to business. This is a year of non-committal bliss.
You enjoy the perks of being an upperclassman without the haunting reality that soon you will be an adult and won’t go out on Thursdays anymore.
“I’m a senior.” You say these words and instantly, you feel superior. You are older than almost all of the TV characters you grew up watching.
You are powerful. You are the ruler of your campus and everyone below you is a mere peasant forced to admire you from afar and show up at your door with freaky fast Jimmy Johns, slippers, and a letter of permission from the Department of Commerce.
Then, as if by some cruel trick of fate, you are suddenly overcome with anxiety. No, no, no. You’re not ready to be an adult. You don’t know how to do your taxes, or work on Fridays, or appropriately tip mediocre waiters and not pull the “I’m just a broke college student” card, or invite co-workers to lunch, or complete a Sudoku puzzle.
Senior year is like a Nicholas Cage movie.
One minute everything is exciting and lighthearted and you’re going to steal the Declaration of Independence, and the next minute, you are having a freak-out tantrum with such unprecedented, unadulterated emotion that you are unsure of whether you should just quit school altogether and become a flight attendant or adopt a parakeet.
When you are a senior in high school, you wonder who will be in your classes. You wonder who you will take to prom. You wonder what cereal you will eat for breakfast. Now suddenly, you are wondering, “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”
Although you stress over that statement for far too long and far too many times, you soon realize that no one else quite knows the answer either.
So, you sing karaoke in a rustic dive bar on a Wednesday night and bond over the fact that you are all still trying to figure it out.
There will be moments when you question whether a major in "Sustainable Aquatic Biological Engineering" will ever get you a job. There will be moments when you worry that you will never be in a real relationship even though every preteen on Instagram seems to have already found love. There will be moments when you cry because you never want to live in a single-person apartment without your best friends and all of their laughs, clothes, and mozzarella sticks.
Becoming a senior is a whirlwind of emotion, and sometimes deciding how you feel is like deciding on an ice cream flavor at Handels. There are a lot to choose from. Some are better than others. In the end, the result is sweet.
Cherish the days ahead. Even though there will be stress, there will be tears, there will be a lack of sleep, these days are guaranteed to bring you some of the best memories and friendships you will ever come to know.
These are the days you'll remember. So forget your worries.
You don't have to live knowing exactly what you want to do and when you want to do it. You just have to live. Here's to senior year.
