It happens every year. You have a nice long summer off from academic responsibility (aside from an assorted summer class, should it apply to you), and then September hits. Classes start, and suddenly the stacks of syllabi and textbooks seems never ending. The influx of responsibility can seem a bit much, especially when you’re smacked with academic TMI. “Wait, we have a twenty-page paper due this semester? AND three group projects?!”
Despite the rush of info, you generally learn to settle in and divvy up all of your assignments into a manageable, if still super huge, pile.
This was always my normal routine flow. That is, until senior year hit.
The first week of classes just ended and somehow I feel like my brain is going to shrivel up if I read one more long-winded, incredibly specific syllabus. If I get another assignment tacked on to my already-demanding list due bright and early next week, I’m going to cry. And I’m definitely considering emailing each and every one of my professors to tell them that if they assign one more surprise textbook, I might actually drop dead from a heart attack.
But what can you do? It’s senior year. It’s the last year, filled with upper-level classes and internships and seminars. Everywhere you look, there’s someone talking about preparing for Life After College—something that I shudder to consider.
Sure, there are those few in the bunch that saved some of their common core for senior year to lighten the load, and I applaud you for your freshman-level projects and papers that I’d kill to go back to. For most of us, though, a senior curriculum is saving the hardest for last.
A year, just two semesters, separates you and your undergraduate degree. However, take into account that those two semesters are basically like walking through the seventh circle of hell. Everything’s on fire, there’s no end in sight, and you just really want your mom and a nap.
So if you’re like me, when it’s only the first week of school and you’re already 90% sure you’re heading for an excruciatingly painful, school-related death…I’m here to tell you it’s going to be okay anyway.
At this point you’re like, Wait. No. You just spent the first 350 words of this article talking about how psychotically terrifying senior year is. What do you MEAN it’s going to be okay?!
No, I’m serious. It’s going to be fine.
Senior year is supposed to scare the you-know-what out of you. It’s supposed to test your grit and push your sanity to the edge. You’re fighting to complete your undergraduate career—and nothing worth fighting for will ever come easy.
I wish I could say there was some magic secret to fly through your senior year with ease, but that’s just not how it’s going to happen for any of us. All the advice I can give is to lean on your support system and just keep telling yourself you’re going to get through it because, even though you’ll have a million days where you think you won’t, you will.
You just have to take your own word for it, and maybe drink a truckload of coffee. Whatever's going to help you get through the day. And the rest of the year.
