21 and a junior. Wow this is the year I turn 21, and finish my third of what will be hopefully a four year college career. I cannot believe it. Looking back to when I was younger, I thought I would have everything figured out by now. I thought I would definitely know what I would be doing for the rest of my life, who I would be doing it with, and where all of this would be happening. I was definitely wrong about that prediction. Honestly, I am glad my prediction so many years ago was so wrong! Coming back to college as a junior has been awesome! It is a great feeling to know your way around campus, know the professors, have Organic Chemistry behind you, live in a house, and have amazing friends that you already have shared two years of memories with!
This year was the first year that returning to campus was not a painful experience! I was so excited to come back to campus, because I felt that I finally had a niche where I fit in almost perfectly. This differed drastically from freshman year when I had myself convinced I would never make a friend on campus and would be forced to struggle through my four years of college as a friendless hermit. It also differed from sophomore year when I was still surprised that I had made so many great friends my freshman year that I thought for sure it would not work out as well for my sophomore year, but to my surprise it did. So now for my junior year I slid right back into that friend group, and it was like none of us had ever left campus!
It’s also amazing because you know most of the professors now, know where classes take place, and are looked up to by underclassmen like you looked up to juniors when you were a freshman or sophomore. It is quite a self esteem boost every time an underclassman asks me for advice on what professor to take a certain class with, study tips for certain classes, and where buildings are on campus. I take it as a compliment, because it must look like to someone that I have some things put together, although honestly I have nothing put together. It is crazy to see these freshmen walking around campus and realize that you are as old as the juniors you looked up to your freshman year were when you started college. It is also eye-opening and a bit comforting to discover that even though it looked like they had everything put together then, through your naïve freshman eyes, they probably were no more put together than you are currently.
All in all, you are probably just starting to get comfortable, as a junior, in a place you cannot imagine leaving one day but that dreaded day of graduation will come faster than we think. A lot has changed since freshman year and a lot can change before graduation. about it. You are probably doing something right now, as a junior that your freshman self would never have expected you would be doing and you are probably so glad you are doing it! So enjoy this time we have right now in a place where we are blessed to feel comfortable, safe, and loved because before we know it, it will all be gone and we will have to deal with those questions of what we will be doing for the rest of our lives, who we will be spending that life with, and where all this will be happening.
