Two days ago I woke up and realized that I was about to face my last first day of school ever and I literally just could NOT BELIEVE IT. It’s so weird to think that 16 years and 3 different schools later, this was THE LAST TIME it was happening. It’s also hilarious that after 16 years of the same old first day of school experience, I still had those first day of school jitters. Even being the “top dog” on campus didn’t completely get rid of the underlying annoying thoughts such as “Will I know anyone in my classes?” and the dread of those first day of class awkward introductions where you have to say your name and where you’re from and of course, everybody’s favorite, “a fun fact” about yourself. I don’t know about anybody else but I can honestly say that it’s really hard to come up with a random fun fact on the spot. It’s almost like the more I try to think of one the fewer “fun facts” pop into my head. I usually end up saying something lame like “I have two brothers”. I figure by now that it’s an acceptable fun fact since more than half of the class uses their siblings or pets as a savior for not having something incredibly interesting to spit out to a room full of strangers and with only a couple of minutes to think. So I guess thank you, brothers, for existing so I can use you as my fun fact. Thankfully on this lovely last first day of school I successfully avoided any of those awkward class introductions. I guess all of the professors figure we already know each other since it’s senior year.

Aside from all of the fun fact nonsense I would just like to address the fact that senioritis is a real condition and if you are already suffering from it in these very first few days of class just know that you are not alone because I, too, am experiencing this problem. I mean after spending over 75 percent of our lives in school, we are all itching to be done with it because the end is so close! But at the same time it’s terrifying because we know it’s going to fly by and we are going to look back on our school-age days with nostalgic longing as we go on to face the real world. The whole concept of being a senior is such a bittersweet thing.

While we are excited to finally be done with school forever, it’s also really scary for a couple of reasons. The first being that we have basically spent our entire lives, at least as far back as we can actually remember, in school. If that is the case, HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY SURVIVE WITHOUT SCHOOL…WE KNOW NO OTHER WAY OF LIFE. But I promise it will be okay because by the time the year ends and real life rolls around we will be prepared and hopefully have some sort of idea of what we are going to do with our lives. Second, not being in school means we have to find a job...and be real adults out in the real world. That means this whole intermediate period of technically being adults by age but still being able to get away with doing stupid stuff and blaming it on the fact that we’re just college students and "this is the time to make mistakes" is over. After graduating, it’s the real deal.

But don’t worry friends, because we’re all in this together and if we’ve made it this far and survived all of the transitions from elementary school to middle school to high school and finally to college, who’s to say we won’t be just fine in this transition from college to real life. My last words of advice as we embark on this final year of school journey together are to enjoy it while it lasts and not stress too much about the future because it’s all going to work itself out and everything we learned in school for the past 17 years is going to help us succeed as REAL adults in the REAL world, right? And I guess if the thought of being away from a school is giving you too much separation anxiety you can always go to graduate school or become a teacher or something. Let’s do this Class of 2017, it’s finally our turn!