As the spring semester comes to a close, the class of 2023 prepares for their senior year of college. As a member of this class, I have had a lot on my mind as this coming school year approaches. I’m sure that many of you might be feeling the same way. That being said, I hope that this letter to Senior Year will put your emotions to words and give you a sense of ease in such an anxious stage of life.
Let’s start with the obvious: the fall of 2019 feels as though it was a whole world apart from where we are now. That was my first semester of college. I came in as an anxious freshman, studying an entirely different major, with a seemingly rock-solid life plan ahead of me. As all of you know, life would soon be shaken. And while I do mention COVID, I don’t want to focus on the negatives that we have all heard spoken countless times at this point. The pandemic shook the lives of collegiate Gen Z students in a way that I think is almost completely invisible to people in other stages of life. Right before the pandemic hit, I changed to a communication major, but little did I know that being bored in my house would lead me to send in an application to write for this very website. That was the first of a long string of rapid changes in my life, while I was waking up every morning in a stagnant quarantine loop, much like Groundhog Day. Fast forward a few years and I will have faced some eye-opening revelations on my identity, mental health, and life goals…plus a change on the outside too. (Thank you, at-home hair dyeing sesh!)
Many of you might already know where this story is leading, but for those of you who are wondering “how did being stuck inside make you realize these things?” I am here to answer just that… the internet. The only outlet we all had to communicate with people outside of our residence was digital. This also led to increased social media usage, and for many of us, increased time on TikTok. There is much to be said about the effects of algorithms such as the one that TikTok utilizes, but I’m not here to discuss that in this article. What I am interested in is what happened once I found my niches on the app. The algorithm leads you to groups of people and niche communities that match your likes and interactions while scrolling. So, after many days of boredom and scrolling, my For You page had been finely tuned. I was introduced to so many different walks of life and here I found out about parts of myself I mentioned earlier.
Enough about me, how does this relate to the college experience? Those in older generations have spoken about how many things were ruined for younger folks because we were robbed of social experiences and self-exploration throughout these years. And while the pandemic was definitely difficult, I am grateful to have had access to these online communities that helped me express who I am. College has always been dubbed a place to find yourself, and I was worried at the beginning of all of this that I wouldn’t be able to progress as much as I wanted to, going into college. I honestly think in some ways, observing how people my age have dealt with this world event, being locked inside with our thoughts made that process fast-forward. This was not something I expected, those first few weeks of quarantine were some of the most anxious weeks of my life. I’m just glad that I was able to form something valuable out of such a difficult and confusing moment in history.
As we go forth into our senior year, I encourage you to think about what has changed for you since the pandemic started. I know we are inclined to see the negatives, but I promise there are positive changes that you might have not even noticed. These few years have gone by in a blink, and for many have been hard to process, so it’s easy to assume nothing has changed. You’d be surprised. Best of luck in the next phase of your life, and may we all continue to find and express the truest forms of ourselves…because they are beautiful.
