It’s the first week of classes! Yay! I hope. I hope everyone had a great first week of classes. I had a pretty decent week, but that’s still better than awful. But, while having this mediocre week I realized something.

I am a junior. A fall semester third year. I am halfway through with my undergraduate experience. I have completed all but two of my general education requirements. At the end of this semester I will need two more classes for my history major, eight more classes for my theatre major, and two more classes for my French minor. That all together is fourteen classes. Fourteen classes over three semesters is one six course semester and two four course semesters. Totally doable. And, if I’m smart and start working on both of my theses during this upcoming summer instead of procrastinating, it won’t even be painful. I feel relieved.1

And scared. How did I get here? I don’t remember how I did it.

How did I wake up a junior in college? When did this happen? I am looking at graduate programs already. Their requirements for admissions, their cost of applications, their audition process. I’m making excel spreadsheets in an attempt to curb this unending feeling that I am heading over a cliff with no way to stop it.

This cliff is ever looming, and it seems to be staring me in the face. But it can’t be a cliff, because I feel it sitting on my chest and getting heavier every semester. It’s like a baby that when first born seems so manageable, but over time as it grows becomes nearly impossible to lift. Its name is adulthood. I am approaching adulthood.

Not this false state of existence between eighteen years old and twenty-two (college years, typically) where you walk around pretending to be an adult. This age range where you’re slowly trying the fun and exciting adult things like alcohol, drugs, sex, traffic tickets, getting overdrafted 10 dozen times before you learn to stop spending money for the sake of spending money, vacations, STDs and pregnancy scares, taxes, scheduling doctor visits, switching your major two semesters before graduating, and calling your parents panicked because you have a flat tire.

You see, this is the age range to make those mistakes and try those new things. College is basically the adult version of training wheels. It’s the moment you dip your toe in the water before your friend pushes you in from behind.

I don’t know if I’m prepared. I know I’ve changed from when I was a panicked yet cocky eighteen year old who was convinced she knew everything there ever was to know. I never used to clean or do laundry. Now I do laundry every week (and even color and fabric coordinate, and hand wash and hang dry half my closet), I make my bed every morning, and I clean my room before bed. I use to treat money like a renewable resource, without any regard to what I would need that money for in the future. Now I pay my credit card bill two weeks in advance, and I automatically pay for my Netflix and Hulu accounts.

But that training period is definitely coming to an end. I have to start taking the bolts off the training wheels, and then the training wheels off the bike, and eventually get back on and hope I don’t fall off.

To my first years who are excitedly ignoring the future, hold on. Make those mistakes and screw up. Burn some pots when you try and cook for the first time. Put a "hand wash only" garment that you love in the dryer, then heartbrokenly take it out and proceed to throw it away. Poorly choose to order pizza using your last twenty dollar bill for two weeks, knowing you need shampoo. Call your mom freaking out the first time your period is late and you’ve recently started having sex, and then laugh hysterically when it turns out to be stress related. Lose those friends who you make at the beginning of this year who you don’t actually have anything in common with, and become close with those you never thought you’d speak to. Enjoy adult bootcamp. You only get it once before that cliff approaches faster than you can blink.