If you are in college, you may realize that senior year is fast approaching or maybe even coming to an end for yourself or those around you. If this is something you or the people close to you can relate to at all, then it’s important to recognize how important and life-altering of a time it is.
The relationships you have built for months, semesters, and even years may come to experience a separation or closing point! This could be due to location, living arrangements, or even new jobs and new chapters/ seasons that you or your best friends may be entering. Take a minute and try not to freak out. Your best friends or partners’ graduation doesn’t mean life is over, but you may need to be more creative about making plans with them. They are entering a whole new realm of busyness! In college, we are so blessed to have the community we do. As we wrap up the end of the semester, be thinking about ways to be extra intentional and sensitive with your friends who are graduating and jumping into new chapters.
There are new highs and lows for all of us as students entering new seasons. What’s next? Engagement, moving, careers, even kids! The world is our oyster! We can’t always plan the next step of each day either. We are not the writer of our plans! Embrace every moment you have with your current college friends as well as the ones you may need to say goodbye to. Senior year is a sentimental time for family, friends, and college students.
Be creative in the way you celebrate your loved ones. It’s an exhausting time of the year, but it’s so important to plan the extra coffee date, show up to that dinner, and even host the last movie night! Making a genuine effort to celebrate and maintain relationships during busy deadlines is vital to continuing those relationships in the future, and taking some time for loved ones can serve as a great break between stressful finals or end-of-semester tasks.
How can you support the seniors around you, and be the best friend you were created to be? We are made to live in a community, and being surrounded by the best and then separated by those can be the hardest thing some of us have ever dealt with! Adapting to change and creating new memories is so powerful. We easily develop attachments to those around us without even intending to because we crave friendship and intimacy/ interaction.
How can you make your goals and intentions/ the importance of your friendship with seniors be impactful and memorable?
Spending your extra dining dollars, buying friends little gifts, making cards, decorating their rooms, or even doing the mundane tasks for them will make the biggest impact! Completing every little to-do list task as a senior becomes extremely exhausting and harder & harder to complete at the end of the run.
Also, putting your emotions and extra feelings aside, and just embracing your senior friends in all of their glory and change is the best route to take!
Brainstorm a list of things you can do for your senior girl & guy friends, and then exercise the intentionality to make it happen!