It feels strange to sit down and write the first article of my junior year of college. Two years ago, I was a freshman; I was new to college and in search of my voice. Now, for the third year, I continue the tradition my past self began, creating a playlist for my junior year. Since my freshman year, Taylor Swift has completed her historic Eras Tour, released Speak Now and 1989 Taylor’s Version, and produced her Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology double album. Now, she is preparing to release her twelfth album, The Life of a Showgirl, in October, and I couldn’t be more excited to see what the album has in store.
“This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”
“This is why we can’t have nice things, darlin’. Because you break them, I had to take them away”
This song is at the end of the Reputation album and is often overlooked. While the majority of the album focuses on love songs, this song is often interpreted to be about the period after the 1989 album when Taylor was ridiculed by Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, the media, and people she had once considered friends. The song paints the story of a celebration that is disturbed by one of the guests, leading to Taylor to lament her inability to have good things (like a relationship/friendship) with this person, as they always ruin it.
- “So, why’d you have to rain on my parade? I’m shaking my head and locking the gates.” During junior year, many students live off campus, focus on schoolwork, and look to the post-grad future. You no longer live in an extremely small dorm room, and you have more space to yourself. This allows you to set boundaries that you were unable to enforce in dorms because, in such small quarters, space and amenities had to be shared. Taylor, in this song, is setting a boundary between herself and someone in her life. She has given this person chances, but she feels that every time she lets them in, she is hurt.
- “This is why we can’t have nice things, darlin’. Because you break them, I had to take them away.” You mature by junior year, and you have perspective when you reflect on your time in college. You’re able to see what went right and what went wrong. Junior year is the time to choose who and what you want to give your time to. You ask questions like, “What are my priorities going forward? What is going to best prepare me to face the years after college?”
“this is me trying”
“I had the shiniest wheels, now they’re rusting”
This song is arguably one of Taylor Swift’s saddest songs. That doesn’t mean I think junior year is one of the saddest years of life at all, but you do feel like the newness of college has worn off. You start getting questions about your future, internships, and interviews. It feels like everyone is looking at what you have done so far and judging if it is enough. You can start to compare yourself to others and feel like you should have been doing more over the last two years.
- “I just wanted you to know / That this is me trying.” Everyone has a different journey in college, and it would be wrong to compare one journey to another. College is full of changes and adaptations; sometimes, you don’t adapt as well as you think you will. Junior year can feel like you should have everything figured out, like you should be an adult, but you still feel stuck.
- “I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere.” Taylor is able to put this complex mindset into words so easily that it feels very personal. And sometimes that’s what can help; hearing someone else put your feelings into words can be very reassuring. This song is cathartic and allows you to scream your heart out to the lyrics. Junior year can feel like a lot of pressure, and in some ways it is. It’s okay to have doubts and feel like some days you are going through the motions. But by junior year, you also have an incredible network of support in college: you have friends you’ve known for years now, and you know you can lean on them and find support in them, no matter how you feel about being a junior. I’m eternally lucky that I have friends who are there on my best and worst days. They are friends I know I will have for life.
“The Lucky One”
“You had it figured out since you were in school. Everybody loves pretty, everybody loves cool.”
This song has always been my favorite one from the Red album. Taylor’s storytelling is on full display in this song; it follows the journey of a female artist who becomes famous and eventually disappears from the spotlight. Taylor looks up to this artist, idealizing her career. I have looked up to the older women in my sorority since my freshman year. As a freshman, they were everything I wanted to be: they were involved on campus, they excelled academically, and they had great groups of close friends.
- “Yeah, they’ll tell you now, you’re the lucky one. But can you tell me now you’re the lucky one?” Taylor, in the song, discusses her idealization of the artist and what it was like when she reached the same level of fame. By asking her idol for advice on how to handle the weight of her career and questioning whether following her was the right choice, she shows how her perspective has changed over the course of the song. After freshman year, it felt like my turn to be a leader. I became a mentor, a big, and a leader in my sorority. I never stopped looking up to the older women. They showed me how to balance academics and an active social life. It always looked so easy to me, but as I’ve discovered, doing it all is harder than it looks. I started to build relationships with the women I looked up to. I took them off the pedestal I had placed them on and instead saw them as friends.
- “It was a few years later, I showed up here / And they still tell the legend of how you disappeared.” Now, as a junior, some of those girls have graduated and moved on to post-grad life. Getting to see them thrive in their jobs and pursue graduate degrees is amazing. I will always look up to those women. And campus doesn’t feel quite the same without them. I hope I can make even half of the impact on a younger member in my sorority that they made on me.
A Glance at the rest of Junior year
Overall, junior year is a complicated one. Living off campus, digging into upper-level classes for my major, and looking to the future have brought new challenges. But this year has also made me feel more connected to my college than before. I know I have found a home here with people I love and who have my back. I know I can face the unknown of the future because of how much I’ve grown over the last two years. I can’t wait to see what this year holds.