If you're like I am, and starting your senior year of college in a few weeks, you must have a million things running through your mind. I know I do — from what I’m going to do with my life, to how I’m going to get there and everything in between. We think about jobs, grad school, finishing up our degrees, and keeping the friendships we made while still trying to enjoy our last year.
Here are a few big thought every college senior has.
1. Grad school or no grad school?
One big decision that you have to make is whether or not to attend grad school. It’s one of the biggest decisions you might have to make your senior year. Grad school is expensive, and it means around two more years of schooling. So you must make the decision to go right after graduating, wait a year or not at all. My advice is that if you’re someone who doesn’t think they would go back to school after waiting, start looking now. Otherwise save your money and wait.
2. Am I actually going to find a job right a way?
After graduation, your goal is to find a job in your field. I mean that was the whole point of spending all that money on that degree, right? You might even be worried that with your degree it might take time to find one or involve moving to a bigger city. My degree is marketing, so I know I’ll have to eventually move to a bigger city. Well the reality is, no matter what your degree is, you WILL find a job in your major. Even if you don’t have one right after gradating and have to take a job completely different, it will happen. Good things come in time. As long as you keep searching, one day all those classes you took will pay off.
3. How am I going to leave my college friends?
I think moving on and leaving my college friends is a scary thing to face. They are the people you spent for years making memories with. All the times you spent going out and drinking at bars, the house parties, the late nights talking about anything and everything, and of course cramming for those finals together. You start to think to yourself, what I am I going to do without them? Will we still keep contact with each other?
Then, you start to worry that you won’t. I know I am starting to have that concern. But true friendship doesn’t mean you have to see each other everyday. It’s going days and even months without much communication, then finally seeing each other and talking, acting like nothing ever changed.
Also it’s having the confidence that if a friend of yours doesn’t hang out when you ask, you know it’s because they are actually busy. Not because they don’t want to. You know that if they could, they would be right there. If you have so friends like that, then your friendships will last.
4. Do I have to become an adult?
One of the biggest fears a college senior has is the reality of adulthood. Once you graduate college, you’re more of an adult than ever before. You have completed a degree, are required to do the 9-to-5 life, get an apartment and move out on your own and pay bills all the time. In a matter of nine months, you will be leaving the sheltered walls of college and going out into the real world out on your own.
Yes, your college years are almost over, and it's sad. But while you're stressing about what's going to happen next, remember that you still have one more year of college left. So make the most of it. Plan for the future, but live in the present as well. Have fun and take A LOT of pictures. After all, college is the best four years of your life.
