A few weeks ago, I registered for the classes that will make up the first semester of my senior year of college. After everything was official, I just stared at the screen, dumbfounded. I very dramatically texted my dad, “What did I just do?”
His simple response: “What you’ve been working towards for a while.”
Within the next few days, I saw tweets and statuses from my high school friends about signing up for their senior year classes, too. It brought about a flood of memories about our last year of high school; comparing schedules, getting sentimental about time running out, panicking over the future, and having really no idea what was coming next. From graduation, to college orientation, to moving onto the campus that has changed my life, for better and for worse.
But really mostly for the better.
It’s funny how the four years of high school and the four years of college run strangely parallel. Newbie freshman experiences, the sophomore slump. The junior year stress. The senior sentimentality. The years are spent with different people and filled with different memories, but the motions are almost the same.
Do you remember when you went into college as a freshman? How absolutely freaked out you were — that weird, unexplained mixture of excitement and terror? You honestly had no idea what to really expect. You had no idea who you were going to be, only who you had been for the last four years.
You might have come into college with a major declared. You might not have. You might have changed your major five times already. The point I’m trying to make is that before you came into college, you were scared out of your mind with no idea about what was to come next. Sooner or later, you’re going to leave college. Do you have any idea about what’s to come next?
You might, but does anyone really? Look back over the time you’ve spent in college so far. Did you expect any of this to happen?
One of the biggest lessons college has taught me is to embrace the unexpected. Not even just that — embrace life’s every twist and turn, every opportunity thrown at you, every chance that presents itself and more. I’ve changed so much from who I was on freshman move-in day three years ago, and I know I’ll be even more different three years from now, but I’m not afraid to change.
The college experience is like nothing else in the world. It’s breathtaking and bizarre. It’s extraordinarily stressful. It’s brought me through every emotion I could ever think of, it’s brought me more people than I ever could hope to have met.
As I prepare to take on my very last year of college, this is the advice I can give with confidence: keep your mind and heart open and do not fear change. Nothing will last forever, even when you so badly want it to, but that’s what makes life so valuable. Appreciate everything and everyone that comes and goes through your life; love them, learn from them.
There will never be anything like this again, but that’s the way it should be. Life may seem crazy now, you may feel like you have no direction, or maybe you have too many directions to choose from. Just take a breath and take everything in stride. Someday, everything that is happening now will be useful to you -- and you will never feel more grateful.
