While the song Wake Me Up When September Ends is based on the passing of lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong’s father and that is a very important, meaningful aspect of the song, the song can also relate to other parts of life that aren’t necessarily as serious. This doesn’t mean that this song is as important for students adjusting back to the first month of school as it might be for people that have just lost someone, but the first few lines and title of the song relate to me a lot as a new college student.
Summer has come to pass
For many freshmen, the summer before college can seem like the last hurrah. It is a summer many choose to spend with friends and family, traveling or having a fun doesn’t-matter-if-it-works-well-with-your-resume job. It is also a summer spent thinking about and planning for the big move to college. In many ways, having so much time to just think about the future can build it up in your head. While I personally did not spend too much time preparing or thinking about college during the summer because I was busy working, in the months between being accepted and graduation, I thought about it all the time. I would imagine myself confidently strutting down College Walk, a book about Feminist Theory in one hand, Broadway student rush tickets in the other, about to turn the corner to go eat some of the most delicious pizza I had ever tasted with some of my many friends. Obviously I knew that that wasn’t exactly what college is like, but I was so ecstatic about the fact that I had gotten in and was going to be living in New York that I totally forgot about the fact that would it take a while for me to get to this point, if I ever did.
The innocent can never last
That last summer can also be a high. Having just graduated from high school and on your way to the next step, it can feel like you are on top of the world. I definitely felt this way. I was closer than ever with my high school friends as we realized we would have to be leaving each other soon, and I spent the summer working with kids and then going to all my favorite places in the Bay Area and seeing all my favorite people on my days off. I had a job, great friends, a new relationship and a car. How much more adult could I be? Then all of the sudden I was in New York and I had none of those things. In many ways I am just as much an adult as I was this summer: living by myself in a new, big city. But because I am new, the natural transition from big fish to little fish often feels even more stark.
Wake me up when September ends
This little fish in a big pond feeling combined with the excitement and expectations I had had before made the first month particularly rough. When it became September, college was really starting. August was this weird half and half, in-between month, but September told me that I was really here. I was excited to be here, and I knew how many amazing opportunities there were, but nothing was settled in. I didn’t know who to eat with, which library I should study at, how I should take notes for class or what to do on the weekends. This feeling of not knowing, and of not having a routine made each day last forever. Sometimes I would go to bed really early just because I had nothing to do. Literally wake me up when September ends.
But what the song is saying is that time heals wounds, even if not completely. September has ended (we made it!) and it’s a new month. I still don’t know what I’m doing a lot of the time and I’m not totally settled in with friends or classes, but there’s not that same feeling of awkwardness every day. I’m not just waiting for each day to end so I can hope that the next one is better. Some days are longer than others, but each day there is an opportunity to learn something or meet someone and become more acquainted with this place I will be living in for the next 3 years and 7 months. It doesn’t mean that every day I need to meet someone or do something, many times change happens naturally. But it’s important to try to make the most of every day, because otherwise I will wake up one day and it will already be May 2020, and I’ll realize how much time I wasted just waiting.
