As the year comes to an end, everyone begins to plan out their summers with their study abroad, trips to visit friends, and figuring out their next year at UGA. For seniors, they are trying to get jobs, looking for things to do in whatever new city they’ll live in, or wondering if Grad school is worth the money to stay in college just for another year or two. Throughout this year I have noticed that there are five stages to graduating that most seniors will experience first hand.
1. There’s the excitement of saying that you’re a senior in college as you begin to take your last tests and get to take your capstone classes. As one begins to think about all of their lasts this leads to sadness.
2. Sadness that you only have one more year left to complete your “college bucket list.” Sadness that you have one year left to live with some of your best friends. Sadness that you will be leaving a place that you have made your home over the past four years.
3. Once you pass sadness, you go into denial that you’re graduating. People start to consider Grad school whether you ever wanted to or not, anything to stay in Athens longer.
4. The denial of wanting to stay in college turns into sentiment of what you have done in college. Looking back on the memories of the past four years and all of the friends that you have made. All of the times that you went out instead of studying or came back from going out and eating half the food that you had while questioning why you felt sick the next day.
5. To close off your time at college it seems that the ending is (attempted) acceptance. It is hard to close such a major chapter of your life that has taught you so much, but you know that you have to move on at some point. You will hear the freshmen talking about how they don’t want the year to end because they’ll have to leave all their new friends and you laugh as you know that you’re the one who really has it rough.
Leaving home after high school might have been hard for some people, but leaving a place you made your home makes it even more difficult. You’ll find who your real friends are and wait a few months to see who you actually do stay in touch with. A time of figuring out if a 9-5 job is really as scary and boring as it can sound. Realizing that college really was a great time, but there’s no way you can stay forever because at some point you have to grow up.
Seniors, you have grown up. You have left a mark on this campus to make it the place you wanted it to be. You have been here for your first Presidential election, for the snowstorm in 2014, for the final year of the original Bolton dining hall, and for the changing of a football era. There is no way to deny that the graduating seniors have been with UGA through the thick and the thin, but now it’s time that you use your knowledge to make yourself, your parents, and your university proud by showing off what the past four years has taught you. Be courageous, stick to what you think is right and wrong, and show that you have grown up. But most importantly, remember that you can always come back to Athens whenever you’d like because it will always be here for you.