We’ve made it to our final year of our undergraduate programs, and everything we’ve been preparing for the last three years is finally here. The last few weeks I’ve seen so many people writing about all the things the freshman should expect or prepare for. But us? We’re the veterans and we are starting our most difficult year of school yet. Let’s face it, we deserve a round of applause, a standing ovation, or just a plain pat on the back.

Over the last three or four years, we’ve survived all the problems of living in the dorms — You remember, that small cramped space we had to share with another human being and had to fit all of our belongings into? If you were lucky then you met your lifelong friend when you moved in there. If not, then you met your true friends elsewhere. But whether you liked your roommate or not, most of us suffered living in a cramped space, a lack of privacy, having to wait in a line of 20 people for the shower, and camping out in the laundry room for a while to make sure no one stole your clothes.

As the years have passed we’ve all become professional couponers or became just plain frugal when we learned exactly how much money food costs as well as rent and utilities. We’ve learned, that while fun and doable our freshman year, we spend less of our weekends at the bars or parties and more of them at home writing papers or preparing for exams. Each semester, more and more is added to our workload and we’ve become professionals at the all-nighters and may have suffered the occasional mental breakdown that has made us question all of our decisions up until this point.

Some of us have left, deciding now isn’t the time to get our degree or decided it wasn’t worth the debt or stress. But for those of us still here, this is it, our final year. Don’t start slacking or get yourself a case of the college version of senioritis, this is easily going to be our toughest year yet. Some of us are working on an undergraduate research project, need to take the GRE, are completing their placements or student teaching, applying to graduate school, or are starting the process of finding a job in their field; this is no time to slack off! So, take a deep breath, send a prayer to whomever you believe in, and dive right into it because we are almost done.

Good luck to us all.