“Wanna go out with us tonight?” No, I’m all good! “It’s only 10 p.m.!” Exactly. “All you do is study and work.” Yep. And so it goes. What “Senior Season” looks like for me is early bedtimes and even earlier wake-up times. Turning down plans to facilitate these rest and wake times happens more frequently than agreeing to the plans. I opt out of plans that 19-year-old me would have jumped at and spend Saturday nights with a chore list instead of a bar tab.
Wow, when did I get to this point?
In my early college years, I was the last to leave the party and the first to propose a day chock-full of adventures. I was the instigator and accomplice of stories my friends and I have retold hundreds of times. Now, somehow I’m more worried about cleaning my bathroom and finishing at least three assignments than immersing myself in the idea of the true “college experience” that motivated many of my freshman and sophomore adventures.
Noticing these lifestyle changes led me to the one question every woman asks herself the evening of her birthday lying in bed after the excitement of the champagne cheer has worn off: am I getting old?
As a child, I always looked at adults and thought, “Why are they all so not-excited? Do they ever have the kind of fun that I experience seemingly every day?” I believed that there was a point in the bridge to adulthood that stated: “No fun may be had past this point.” Squeals of excitement, skipping while clutching the hands of friends and belting horrible songs in the car would no longer be allowed.
Luckily, this isn’t necessarily the case, I’ve come to find out.
I’m 21-years-old, which shockingly allows me to consider myself an adult. I still drag my friends along as I scream and run to the front of a basic indie concert crowd and I am singing Olivia Rodrigo and Lizzo louder than I ever have while in my car.
But I’ll be the first to admit: some of the excitement has worn off.
Saying yes to plans takes a lot more consideration: does the plan work in my budget (a budget that is entirely construed in my mind and often is adjusted given how yummy the proposed restaurant sounds or how cute that top I found is), do I have the energy, will I have to sacrifice study time/other friend plans/alone time to be there and do I even really want to be there?
A friend and I were recently talking about this shared experience after I asked her: “Are you also, like, too tired to go out most of the time, and do you never really want to do much that we used to do because everything else in our lives now is too exhausting?”
She agreed.
I decided that growing up-especially in a collegiate setting–is like putting together a puzzle, but this puzzle starts as a 100-piece freshman year and morphs into a 300-piece puzzle sophomore year, and by senior year you’ve got 750 pieces glaring in your face. Pieces are added every time you form a new connection and start a new relationship. Every lesson you learn, every problem you overcome, every class you take, every crazy night out you have, every time you sob cry and every time you cackle-laugh adds at least one piece. It is those fun and exciting and spontaneous moments that defined my freshman year that are pieces of my growing puzzle now as a senior.
I don’t need to necessarily do those same things again because I already have the piece!
Like any puzzle, though, pieces will be missing. That night you chose an 8 p.m. bedtime over a crazy night out could’ve been a life-changing experience. The class you didn’t get into may have opened a new career interest. The one person you never got to connect with deeper could have been a soulmate.
Such is life!
We never know what would have been if we picked a different puzzle. So, all we can do is accept the one in front of us, the one that now has almost a thousand pieces, hardly half of them are put together and quite a few are missing for now or forever.
I can safely conclude that I’m not getting boring, but maybe I am getting a little more appreciative of smaller pleasures and a little less entertained by the spontaneous adventures that used to be entirely new experiences. At last, the excitement of a cleared-out email inbox and the smell of freshly washed bed sheets have taken the place of the excitement of a night that lasted until sunrise, and I think I’ll be just fine.