What will you regret not having done?
That’s the question I ask my seniors whenever we talk about the bittersweet quality of their final semester. The time seems simultaneously too short (especially when you still have to wrap up your senior exercise—eek!) and too long (especially when you still have coursework left to complete—go figure!).
The reality is that there will be no other time in your life like this one, with all of your friends, faculty, and staff in this one place sharing these air molecules over these final weeks. The reality is that most of us will stay while you and your fellow seniors go off into the world and try to make your mark on it in some meaningful way.
Even when you come back to the hill and walk down Middle Path, you’ll be a different version of you, and we’ll be different versions of us, which means time won’t have stood still in the ways that we’d sometimes like it to. It’ll be some slightly altered version of the same scene you think you know but won’t know.
Before you leave here in a few more weeks, think about what you’ll regret not having done. Did you want to make that one comment in class? Did you want to take that professor to coffee? Did you want to stay up late and catch up with that friend? Did you want to stroll along the Kokosing? Did you want to lie outside in the grass? Did you want to catch that film, that game, that performance, that talk? Did you want to capture that moment?
One of the best things about college is that you (theoretically) have the time and space to simultaneously grow and think about your growth, to simultaneously form relationships and think about those relationships, to simultaneously be and become. Yet when you’re going through the hustle and bustle of classes and activities, you often don’t allow yourself the opportunity (or perhaps luxury) to appreciate the life that you’re living and all the components of it.
You know what though? You’ll have even less time once you graduate, start working, and acquire other responsibilities and commitments. So why not relish this period of retrospection and introspection, of connection and inspiration, of gratitude and appreciation?
In this precious moment of time before you truly start to “adult,” think about the moments you have left here and what you want to do with them. And think about those around with whom you’d like to share those moments.
If you dare to ask, perhaps those individuals will say yes. At the very least, you won’t regret not having asked at all.