I’ve written about my friends graduating early before, but this time it’s different. This time, I'm the same age as my friends who are leaving. This time I’m a senior and my friend is too, but she’s leaving early; she's graduating early.
I guess it’s harder for me to imagine graduating early myself because I didn’t come into college with any credits. Zip. Zero. Nada. So, feasibly it was going to be a little difficult for me to graduate early. In my friend’s case, it makes sense. She came into school with a lot of credits, and if she stayed an extra semester, she would basically be taking classes just to take them. Graduating early, for her, makes sense to save money, and time, frankly. But the logistics behind it aren’t why I’m writing.
I’m writing because this whole graduation thing had seemed like a distant thing that, yes, I knew was going to happen soon, but not that soon. And when I realized that that my friend only has a little over two weeks left before college is officially over for her, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Just like I knew my college end date was approaching, I knew her’s was too. We talked about what she’d do with her “future,” her “adult life” all the time. I don’t think I truly grasped it was this close, however, until we were leaving for Thanksgiving break and she just casually mentioned that when we got back, there would be only about two weeks until exams and then after exams, the semester was over.
Throughout the semester, I tried to persuade her to stay; just take one or two fun classes, I said. Obviously, like I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t make sense for her to stay. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to miss her like crazy when she leaves. I’m going to miss her living a few doors down and able to come over and watch movies or cook dinner or do homework in the editing suites with me until three a.m. (yeah, that happens. It’s not just something you see in your Snapchat stories. Welcome to the lives of communications majors).
The other half of it, however, is of course the fact that I’ll be graduating in six months. Even though I love Elon and the community here and am sure I’ll miss it like crazy, I think I’ll be ok to graduate. The idea that is crazy to me, though, is the idea that I’ll be adulting this time next year. Heck, by this time next year, I’ll (hopefully) be adulting for at least four months. And my friend who is graduating early? She’ll have been in this thing we call the “real world” for close to a year. Yikes.
