As I was walking out of my last final this semester, I realized that I just finished my junior year, and I only have one year left until I graduate with an undergraduate degree. At first, I was really excited, then I started to think about it a lot more. When I started to think about it more, I started to get really scared.

I'm so excited to be moving on and graduating next year, but it's going to be weird leaving the place I have called home for the past three years. It feels like just yesterday I was starting to tour colleges and started submitting applications. After I took my final, I realized I needed to start going through that process all over again. It freaked me out.

I plan on going to school until I get a PhD which means I will not be done with school for a fairly long time. With that being said, I don't have to stress about where I'm going to be working after I graduate. Instead, I'll have to be looking at schools to decide where I'm going to further my education.

It feels weird looking at colleges again, and I can honestly say, looking for graduate schools and programs is much harder. All programs are different. Not just in what they require for grades, but also what kind of test you need to take just to apply. Not to mention the GRE (graduate record examination) is only offered every so often while the SAT or ACT is offered every month.

I'm currently a psych major, and I'd like to work with traumatized kids one day. I figured I would be able to get my masters in Clinical Psychology (assessing and treating people with mental illness), and my doctorate in Developmental Psychology (how humans change over the course of their life) or vise versa.

Seems pretty simple, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, there are so many different routes you can take to get to the point I want to be, and it's extremely overwhelming.

I have found that looking for a graduate program is not as easy as looking for an undergraduate program. Almost every school has a psych program at the undergraduate level, but not every graduate school has the kind of graduate program I want. If they do, they may not be accepting applicants at the time (which is super frustrating). Applying to a graduate school is going to take a lot more time and effort to research than I thought, but I'll figure it out.

While I am excited to be starting my senior year, I'm also very nervous because it will (probably) be my last year at the school I'm currently attending, and it means I will be moving again. I also thought the summer before my senior year would be exciting. Instead, I will be studying for the GRE and doing some research on where I will be attending next.

So, here's to getting ready to prepare myself for my next stage in life: graduate school.