Although I’ve had a spring break countdown for like the last two months now, at the same time I am actually kind of dreading the fact that it is approaching so soon. When I was in high school, everyone knew that after spring break was what we liked to call the “Final Push” — basically the last few months of school where classes seem even more overwhelming than usual and we as students become insanely stressed. It’s pretty much the same thing in college: when we all come back from spring break in March, we have about two months to get our lives together and complete another semester with a decent GPA while simutaneously planning for the next school year.
I personally believe that spring break is one of the worst breaks to come back to school from because it’s like bursting a beautiful, sunny, worry-free bubble. Fairfax’s weather is finally warm and you can already see the summer vacaction in the horizon… yet you still have to study for and eventually take final exams. The “Final Push” period is where procrastination and I move from being friends to BEST friends because my Spring Break mindset just wants to cruise through the next two months straight into the summer without having to do any sort of schoolwork.
On the contrary, this is probably the first year where I’ve actually been scared of the “Final Push”. When I come back from Spring Break, I only have two more months of my freshman year left. Freshman year of college has sometimes been lovingly called the “13th year of high school”. It’s pretty much the year of unlimited gen-eds, fun weekends, and only a few mental breakdowns. Unfortunately, freshman year went by way too fast and soon it is going to be time for us to declare our majors, start taking harder (but smaller!) classes, and actually finding out what we want to do after college. I may be getting slightly ahead of myself but the thought is definitely still out there and I’ll be the first to admit I’m scared. To me, it’s so weird that I constantly see prospective Mason students already hashtagging #GMU2020 when I can still clearly remember getting my acceptance letter in the mail a year ago.
So for now, I’ll continue to swimsuit shop and find my perfect pair of sunglasses- but in my mind I’m already trying to plan for the future. Slowly.