It feels like not too long ago I was sitting in my first year seminar course, discussing what the next four years would hold for us. Most of us, intending on graduating in eight semesters, discovered that our undergraduate lives were comparable to a pizza pie. Each semester, we would eat another slice of the pie and when our pizzas were gone, this phase of our lives would be behind us. At the time, the pizza seemed so large and the end of the pie so far away. Yet, here I am, still eating my pizza while looking ahead at the empty box that is to come. I certainly did not expect to be hearing about and planning for the “G Word” just bites into my seventh slice.

This week, my college Commencement date was announced and reality began to set in. I remember clicking the “Future Academic Calendars” tab on my college’s website during that first bite of my pizza and thinking that 2017 seemed so far away. I still had a campus to explore, friends to make, events to attend, clubs to join, and an entire major and certification program to complete. All of the events of “today” filled up the foreground of my vision, keeping graduation in the far, less visible distance. It was always a known fact, but a lesser reality. Now, with two months of undergraduate coursework and a semester of student teaching to complete, I am already experiencing the firsts of the lasts. Though all of our senior experiences will vary based upon course loads, internships, elective choices, and program requirements, the reality of graduation is here for us all.

Are we truly old enough to graduate from college? Are we prepared to enter the “real world?” Are we knowledgeable enough to figure out our taxes, to balance checkbooks, and to stop using our parents’ phone numbers for our grocery store purchases? The uncertainties of our futures are sure to make their way into insecurities about our preparedness for them. It is hard to ignore the fact of our approaching graduation and the implications this has. We must prepare our résumés, apply for graduate schools, start to search for our dream jobs, create future plans that go beyond the next step in our education, and embrace the coming future.

However, we must also embrace the time we have now. Whatever our senior years hold for us, we must remember that they also hold valuable time and we cannot spend that time living in the future or clinging to the past. Instead, we must seize all of the opportunities of today. Attend the campus events with free food, prizes, and craft supplies; stay up later than you should one night because it is worth a tired day; get dressed up and go out with your friends because you only have a few more months all living in the same place; take those discounted trips the school offers; go eat unlimited food at the dining hall at least one more time. There is still time to learn and to live here in our undergraduate lives. Just because graduation is on the horizon, does not mean we must live our lives staring at it.

When recently asked to share a word of advice with my underclass teammates, I explained that it truly is all about time. You have to manage your time well, planning it out to accomplish everything that you want to do, but you also have to embrace it. The time will fly by faster than you will understand until one day you are a senior in college wondering where it all went. I know that the next seven months will fly by just as the last 38 have, but I hope they are meaningful for everyone as we embrace the time we have, the friends around us, the knowledge still to gain, and the opportunities offered to us. While I am looking forward to and preparing for what is to come, I am happy to spend a little more time in the here and now. We have about one and a half slices left until the "G Word," so let’s enjoy all they have to offer us. And, really, when did we eat all that pizza?