As students for 17 years, you grow accustomed to having breaks from school. Students in elementary, middle, and high school usually have breaks for Thanksgiving, winter holidays, spring, and summer. As college students, these breaks not only increase in duration, but also become some of the greatest times to look forward to. Once you become a senior in college and are faced with many decisions about your future, these breaks from reality become the only things to look forward to. Some seniors are venturing into more years of school while others are trying to take on “the real world” and get a job. For those jobseekers, how does it feel to know you will never have a spring or summer break again? How does it feel to know that weekends are going to be the greatest gift from your everyday activities?
It feels surreal that starting in just a few months, some seniors in college will never have a time where they can lay out on a beach for multiple weeks on end -- or even take a week off, for that matter. It’s almost impossible to think that after having spring break for seventeen years, next year, you won’t have one.
It’s unbelievable that this year is the last spring break many students will have for the rest of their lives -- which puts the whole “graduation” notion into perspective. Seniors don’t like to think about never coming back to the undergraduate college in which they attend, but come springtime, all of the emotions of graduation begin to grow. These students will not only have another first day of school, but they also will only have one more last day of school. These students will be saying goodbye to their closest friends and family to travel to the place where their careers take them, yet not returning to the undergraduate college experience they have grown to love. These feelings and thoughts are usually present, yet hidden, in college seniors, but are not expressed or realized until spring.
It’s unimaginable that your college friends will never ask you again, “how was your break?” because you don’t get breaks in “the real world." You get vacations that, at most, last 5 days. These vacations are also more relaxed and subdued than your college breaks. These breaks keep college friends together; yet also allow reconnections between friends from middle and high school. How does it feel to know you will never have another spring break again? How does it feel that in a two short months, your undergraduate college career will come to an end?
It does not feel good.
