Senior year of college comes way faster than you’d ever expect. “They,” everyone and anyone older than you, has always said, “It’ll go by in the blink of an eye,” or “It’ll be over before you know it.” I was always told that the four years of college go by faster than any four years of your life. Unfortunately, it’s true. You get to experience life on your own away from home, you get to submerge yourself in a whole new crowd of people, and you get to really grow as a person.

New people, new challenges, and new situations are what college is about (other than trying to make it out of bed everyday to get to your 10am lecture on time). Living away from home and being at a 4-year undergraduate college lets you branch out, be your own person, and get yourself ready for your future. Your future, whether that consists of more schooling or a career, comes flying at you after four years in full force whether you’re ready or not. The lackadaisical days of waking up hung over at 11am, crawling out of bed for breakfast at 12, and having your biggest concerns being what your friends and you are going to do that night or this weekend, are slowly passing and will soon be a thing of the past. The future, or “real life,” is coming in full swing for us seniors now that the fall semester coming to a close. Grad-school application due dates are coming and going and job opportunities are presenting themselves. It’s a stressful time to be thinking about, but it’s also a sad time as well. For some, it's unbearable to reminisce and feel like they “peaked” in college. You’ve graduated with a Bachelor’s degree, whether you know what to do with it or not. Graduation should be one of the happiest days of someone’s life, but the unknown that comes with the end of May is nothing close to happy.

The place you spent the last four years, where you were laughing until you cry and then crying for completely different reasons, with people you can’t imagine not seeing day in and day out, is about to be a closed chapter in your book. How do people do this? How do you move on and look back, only to laugh at drunk memories and try to keep in touch with people through text and social media, the same people right now you can’t live without? I, personally, plan on pushing off real life for two more years by going to graduate school and I also plan on keeping in touch with the people that right now, I can’t live without. But how can you not be sad, thinking about all of these things in your life are about to change and attempt to turn the page?

They say the 4 years that you’re in college go by before you know it, and they were right. You don’t think about graduating when you’re crying and stressing out over exams and assignments. You also don’t think about leaving your college town after four years and think about maybe never seeing some of the people you see everyday, ever again. You don’t think about the “real world” as anything except a plan in the distant future. And, you also don’t worry about what’s next when you have 4 years in front of you. That near future is here for my fellow seniors and I. 5 months away from graduation and being forced to move out of our college towns and I would do anything to be back hating dorm rooms and dining hall food freshman year because the best 4 years of my life, are almost up.