There’s a certain kind of waiting that does not proudly announce itself. It instead appears in ordinary moments: during and in-between classes, in the pause before opening an email you’re not sure if you’re ready to read, and in the ding of a notification you don’t know could change your life. I have spent much of my final semester of college here in this space of waiting, refreshing my inbox more than I would like to admit while waiting on law school decisions. Though I wait for them every day, those decisions feel more and more distant despite their overwhelming presence on my conscience. This is what it feels like to live in the in-between.
Senior year is often framed as something definitive, a time with a clear ending. There are supposed to be milestone markers: the last class, a final exam, and a graduation ceremony that wraps everything up in a sensible, formal way. But lately, it hasn’t felt like much of an ending at all. It instead feels like a space between versions of my life; I am no longer who I was when I first arrived, but I’m not who I will be after I’ve left. And somewhere in the middle of this, I’m there waiting, just as I’m sure many others are right now.
It shows up at the most inconvenient times: when I’m out with friends but can’t stop compulsively checking my email; when I’m walking across campus and suddenly realize how few of these walks I have left; and when a normal conversation turns into “What are your plans after graduation?” and I don’t have a concrete answer. There’s a subtle pressure in that question, an expectation that everything should already be figured out. But the truth is, for many of us, it isn’t.
We’re constantly told to “live in the moment,” especially during senior year of college. To soak it all in, to appreciate every last experience, to make the most of the time we have left. And I want to do that, I really do. I want to be fully present in the conversations with acquaintances I may not see for a while, the spontaneous plans, the small routines that have come to define my life at college. But being present is more difficult than it sounds when your future feels like it’s waiting on the other side of a notification.
There’s a strange tension in trying to balance both things at once: the anticipation of what comes next and the desire to stay exactly where you are. It can feel like leaning too far into one means not appreciating the other, like thinking too much about the future takes away from the present, but it’s impossible to ignore. So I have been trying, imperfectly, to do both. To check my email, and then put my phone down. To let myself wonder about what comes next, but not let it consume what’s happening right now. To notice things I once overlooked: the way campus feels in the spring, the familiarity of faces I pass every day, the conversations that last longer than they need to simply because they can. Because these moments are not separate from what comes next after graduation, they’re a part of it too.
Maybe the in-between is not something to rush through or resolve, or much of an “in-between” period at all. It’s something to fully embrace, even when it feels uncertain. Especially when it feels uncertain. Because one day, this waiting will end. An email will arrive, a decision will be made, and the unknown will finally become something concrete. When that happens, the version of life I’m still in, the one that still feels unfinished, will soon become something I will look back on.
Therefore, for now, I’m trying to stay here. Not perfectly or without distraction, but intentionally. Learning how to exist in the space between what has already happened and what is still on its way. And maybe that is what senior year really is: not a clean ending, but a beautiful moment of becoming.