As a rising senior, it's hard not to think about what's to come in the next year. In one year, I (and many others like me) will be thrust into the real world and forced to become the adults we have put off being. And it will be so very different.
In one year, we will no longer be undergraduate college students.
We will no longer be taking classes, seeing professors or spending hours on hours doing homework that may or may not actually be useful to us. We will no longer be participating in our favorite clubs or activities. No more sorority functions, weekend parties or writing for a school publication. No more going to school sponsored functions or jumping at the idea of free food on campus. Soon, very soon, we won't be able to do the crazy things that us as college students live to do. No more jumping in fountains or taking late night walks to the water or scaling rooftops to get the best view of the sunset.
In one year, we probably won't be in the same city as our best friends.
We will be getting jobs and heading off to new places, going home until we can find jobs or staying in our college town. We'll be going different directions and going on to new adventures. And chances are, we're going to moving away from the people we have spent the most time with during our four years. If we're lucky, then we'll have one last summer before we split ways, but the reality of it is, we're growing up and we're going to have to go to new places to achieve our goals. We can't all make a mark on this world from the comforts of the town that has held our hearts throughout college.
In one year, we'll be paying back our student loans.
Yes, it's going to happen. Six months after graduation, the bills will start coming and we'll be forced to deal with the financial burden we've been preparing for since our freshman year. Some of us will pay them back quicker than others, but we'll all be in the same boat of attempting to make ends meet while paying them back.
In one year, some of us will be getting married.
It's scary to think that the people you've stayed up all night drinking wine with or singing your hearts out at the bars with will be settling down. But it'll happen. Some will be getting engaged, married or starting a family and others will be getting a pet or drinking enough wine to make them forget that they're still single. Either way, it's going to happen. It's the time in our life when it does and it won't stop there.
In one year, some of us will be getting jobs in our field.
We'll be starting our careers in business, media or the sciences. We'll finally be putting our degrees to work. It'll be great (or so we think) and will will finally be taking the stepping stones to being the real adults we have dreamed of being. But some of us won't be so lucky and will be unemployed after our final year of undergrad. We may be taking jobs we hate or struggling to make ends meet until we land a job in our field. And that's the harsh reality.
And, lastly, in one year, we'll most likely be missing our undergraduate years.
We'll be missing our friends and our crappy college apartments. We'll be missing Thursday nights out while we're now getting enough sleep before work. We'll be missing doing crazy things because we could. We'll even be missing the late night study sessions in the library when we were so delirious all we could do was laugh. We'll be missing the professors that helped us a long and even the ones we couldn't stand (you know they taught you so much regardless). And most of all, we'll be missing everything we couldn't hold onto a minute longer. The friends, the memories and the feeling of being young and carefree.
As much as we'll be missing things one year from now, it's important to remember that we have to make our time here count. Here's to one more year of memories, fun, friends and college. Here's to one more year of pretending we're not adults until we have to face the reality of it. Here's to one more year of being an undergraduate student. And here's to one year of making every moment count.
