You picture your time in college as four years at this cool place, where you live with your friends, free of adult supervision. You talk about graduating together, then getting jobs, starting families, and so on. In a perfect world everyone would do just that, but the reality is, it’s hard to get in and out of college in four years. Cue the awkwardness and brace yourself when you have to tell your parents you aren’t going to graduate on time, because you changed your major too many times, and instead of studying for that important final, you went and binge watched Grey’s Anatomy with your roommates.

So there you are contemplating all possible options for you to graduate with all your friends. You start begging for extra credit and deciding if you should take summer classes, but unfortunately nothing pans out and you’re forced to take a fifth year.

All your high school friends have moved back to your hometown, or have these fabulous new jobs, and you’re stuck trying to plan your schedule so that you can still work your restaurant job while continuing to take classes. You decide to live with a few of your friends from lower grades, since they’ll still be around for their Senior year, hoping things won’t be as bad as you think they will.

You show up to campus on your first day as a “ Super Senior.” All of your college friends are no longer living in your college town, and if they are, they’re your friends from the grade below you. It’s as if you’re a Freshman again. You’re stumbling around trying to figure out what you’re doing and where you’re going, because it seems like a different campus now that all your friends are gone.

You look at your schedule for the first time since you reluctantly registered for classes back in June, and realize somehow you managed to get through four years of college without having to take a Freshman level Algebra class. You realize that for the next four months you’ll be forced to be in a classroom where 90 percent of the students are at least three years younger than you. You haven’t taken a math class since your Freshman or Sophomore year, and everything the Professor says goes in one ear and out the other, because you’re already impossibly over the fact that you’re stuck in this class.

Trying to make friends seems like a loss cause at this point. Why would you want to make new friends? They’re all younger than you, and you think they’ll judge you for not graduating on time. You hide in the back row trying to fly under the radar hoping that no one asks what grade you’re in during the syllabus week ice breaker. Of course the Professor decides to ask everyone that exact question. You lie and say you’re just a Senior, trying to avoid the awkward explanation, but feel the judgement from everyone anyway because again you’re a Senior in a Freshman level class.

You get home to your roommates who are raving about their schedule and new professors. You lock yourself in your room and loathe the fact that you’re stuck at school another year when you could be starting your life in the big world.
A few weeks go by and things don’t seem to be getting any better. You’re still so dumbfounded that you’re still here. That is until you start seeing Facebook statuses from all your hometown friends complaining about their entry level jobs, and how they don’t have time to have a social life.

You start to think to yourself that maybe this “victory lap” through college isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to you. I mean, hey, you don’t have to wake up everyday at six in the morning and drag yourself to a job where you’re probably just getting coffee and donuts for some corporate hot head for next to no money. You’re still able to sleep in until your first class, which just so happens to start at 2pm, and go to your waitress job, work for a few hours and come home with a pocket full of cash to support your bagel bites and Ben and Jerry’s diet. You have another whole year of no adult responsibilities. Your biggest worry is if its acceptable to wear that pair of leggings with all the rips and holes in it to class. (The answer is yes, yes it is okay, no one really cares.)

All your hometown friends start to ask if they can come visit you on the weekends because they're jealous you're still in college. They warn you about the real world and tell you to never graduate because being an adult isn't fun.

You continue your classes without a care in the world, well maybe except the fact that you still don’t remember anything that has to do with algebra. You accept the fact that all your friends your age have moved on and are living their new post college lives and realize that you still have amazing people around that are still your friends. You think back to the weeks that you wasted throwing yourself an endless pity party in your room and laugh at the fact that you were mad at yourself for failing that final last spring. In your friends eyes, you're living the life (but to your parents you're wasting your days, so keep it a secret that you're happy about this).

You realize that everything is going to be okay and begin to enjoy the extra time you have to live without real life responsibilities, and ultimately accept the fact that being a “Super Senior” isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to you.