As a senior this year, I realize that the closer I get to graduating, the more I feel like a freshman all over again. Your freshmen year of college is full of new experiences – moving away from home, sharing a room (if you were lucky enough to grown up with your own), fending for yourself, making sure you wake up for class on time without having a parent yelling from the kitchen, making new friends, seeing new places, reading new books, learning new things (whether you want to or not) and so much more.
Then the years go by and you get to the point where you cannot wait to get out of there – done with school, starting real life. I am currently seven weeks from my graduation, and I’m beginning to feel like a freshman again. I am starting my life. Everything will be new – first time not knowing where I’m going to live (house, apartment, condo, IDK), I’m moving to a new city (and country for that matter), I’ll be completely on my own financially and the list goes on. I never realized how structured my life was up to this point. You go to elementary school, middle school, high school, college…now what? There is no set goal for me to achieve next, at least not one set by society. Sure, you could say that it’s to get a job, but there is no prescription for what job, when, where or a guarantee that it will happen.
I remember my freshman year as a time of change and excitement peppered with nausea and nervous energy. These feelings dissapated with time but I have recently noticed them creeping back up. I have talked to a few of my fellow seniors about it and we have all come to same conclusion: second semester senior year reminds you just how much life there is left to live and how astonishingly little you actually know about it.
I’m scared and thrilled at the same time, just like I was freshman year. I have no idea what to expect, just like freshmen year. I am looking forward to the new challenge, just like freshman year. Not to mention the fact that I will be in the newest group of humans to enter society, making me LITERALLY a freshman in the world.
Walking around campus, it’s always clear who the upperclassmen are versus the underclassmen. The self-assurance, yoga pants and lack of makeup tend to separate the groups pretty quickly, but every time I mention to my friends that we graduate in X amount of weeks, we all get huge smiles followed by looks of sheer panic painted on our faces. I’m lucky enough to know where I’m moving to and who I will be living with, but most of my friends haven’t decided yet. Graduating seniors often have to wait to make those decisions until they know where/if they have a job lined up or housing available – just like freshmen year, or just before, when you are waiting to hear back from all your schools to decide where you will be living in the coming months.
Yes, I am more confident than I was as a freshman. I know who I am and what I want to do. And I am lucky enough to have an incredible person beside me to help me through, but the nerves are starting to kick in – just like freshman year. I have so much left to learn and I cannot wait to get started, as unsettling as everything is.
Just like freshman year, I am going to take a deep breath and jump into this new adventure head first, only this time with a bit more experience, knowledge and poise.