Typically by the end of the spring semester, college students are tired, worn-out, and, above all things, relieved. We've survived and can finally take a second to breathe (at least until work reminds us that we have a shift in half an hour, and we do actually need to make money). It's the end of the semester and most of us have picked our classes and housing for next fall. This time, though, I'm graduating, and I'm not so much relieved that I've gotten through these four years (and I know for a lot of us at Bridgewater, it's more like five) but really incredibly anxious. There's an irony to things ending in spring, the season we usually associate with either birth or renewal.
Graduation or commencement signifies a new beginning too, though, and I get that. I do. But for those of us going out into the "real world" (you know, like we haven't been dealing with it since the end of high school anyway), we might feel a sense of loss. I moved just as I was getting settled in at Bridgewater--I know this campus more intimately than I know the town in which I currently live. A lot of us have friends who aren't graduating with us, and while we can always visit, it's not really the same. If you've been heavily invested in the campus community (and sometimes I wish I had joined more clubs), graduating might leave you asking, "What now?"
I sympathize with last week's article from my fellow BSU writer Rebecca Lawton, who said that she hopes college won't be the best years of her life. Me too--because as great as these four years have been, I want the rest of my life to be even better.
At the same time, while the season's starting to heat up and people are starting to shed clothes at the same time trees and flowers are blooming, I can't help being scared and worried. I thought high school graduation was tough, but now that school has literally been the only thing I've known since I was five years old and I'm going to be (at least until grad school) out of class, there's so much else I need to figure out. The stakes are higher now, and this is so much harder.
What can we tell ourselves to keep from panicking? We can get into grad school. We will be able to get a job (unemployment is steadily going down). We're ready, it's time. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. We're not going to have to live with our parents forever. One day our Lord and Savior Senator Elizabeth Warren will finally be able to conquer the backbreaking load of student loan debt. There are people in the world who love us (genuinely!) and want to see us succeed. Even if we don't make anyone else proud, we'll at least have made ourselves happy. We won't let insults about our generation get us down--we know what we are better than anyone else does. Like the spring, we'll bloom and then enjoy the success of summer.
Besides, if we really end up missing college that much, we can always come back in the fall for homecoming.
