Well, the finish line is now in sight.

You really never think it'll be you. You see your friends graduate, your relatives graduate, your acquaintance's graduate, your peer's graduate. Sure, you can picture your graduation day in your head all the time but you're never really prepared to be a senior in college and for it to be YOU. After all, it seems like only yesterday you graduated high school.

(Eighth-grade promotion, anyone?)

Realistically, I was feeling terribly negative and afraid when my senior year started just this past August. True story, I actually started bawling on my way to class and had to call my mom at 7 AM to have her calm me down. (I'm serious, ask her.) I didn't know how to handle these feelings running through my head.

Did I do enough in my time here at GCU?

Did I join the right organizations and clubs?

Did I make a good amount of lifelong friendships that you read about in books and see in movies?

Did I go to enough events over the past few years, or did I shy away from too much?

It's a very heavy, overwhelming thought process that I really didn't need to have at 7 AM on a Tuesday morning heading to my first class of senior year. You absolutely fly through these four years and sometimes, you realize you did not appreciate enough moments. You didn't really do all the 100 things you had set to do from a list.

But fast forward a couple months, with two weeks left of my second to last semester of college, and I'm not so down about it. I've realized that college (and any level of academia) is unique to the individual. It's never what you read about. It's never what you see in the movies. You make your experience, well, your own. I've found that trying to fit into the mold of everyone else around you is simply exhausting. You don't need to be doing what every Emily or Josh in your class are doing. Craft and mold your college experience to be yours.

If there was one thing I could go back in time and tell my freshmen self, it would be to enjoy the little things. Don't let negative things bring you down, because they really won't matter in a short amount of time. Don't be afraid to let your guard down and do every single thing you want to do.

I really feel eager and excited now. I understand what all my graduated friends or current senior friends mean when they say they're so ready and can't wait to graduate. Before, that thought filled me with terror. I couldn't understand how people were actually excited to leave the cocoon that GCU feels like and implode into the real world. I was afraid of that safety net no longer being mine, but now I'm not. I don't know when these small moments of epiphany happen. I wish I did. It's like at 8:30 AM I'm feeling one way about something, and have been for a while, and at 8:30 AM the next day I have a new thought process on the same thing and intend to go with that more positive framework going forward.

Our brains are weird! Who knows?!

But I intend to relish in every single moment my spring and final semester brings. I intend to embrace both positive and negative happenings. I intend to be authentic and joyful in everything that I do. I intend to not be afraid of being out of my comfort zone and doing things and meeting people I never thought I would. I intend to live loud, and come April not have a single regret.

And with all these intentions, I hope I look back in a year or two's time and read this article in reflection and say, You did it all, and you did it well.