With the school year now in full swing, we’ve all settled into our schedules of homework, activities and jobs. I’m in my last fall semester of my senior year at UNK, and this one looks a little different in terms of stress, especially in the way of creating a life for myself after graduation.
Life is about to do a complete 180 in eight months. The overwhelm of trying to use my last few months for preparation to enter the real world, as well as balancing fun and enjoying where my feet are, has become something substantially hard to deal with.
As a senior who has always had friends older than me, all my conversations with my now-graduated friends consist of telling them me to enjoy my last year in college, how envious of me they are for having one more year or how I need to be doing more fun things. Now, after being fully immersed in what they were experiencing in previous years, it makes me wonder how they ever stayed caught up on fun, let alone life and school.
I went into this school year with only six classes between two semesters to be able to graduate. But, because of course schedules, I wound up in five of my six required classes all in the same semester. Taking this many classes was not out of the ordinary for me, and I was expecting no difference in homework management.
However, the first week was quite the rude awakening.
I’m currently in those five classes, all of which are upper division, as well as playing a sport, working two internships and working at a local bar. To say my schedule is busy may be an understatement. But, in the planning of this semester, I remember becoming so worried about my future after college.
I needed to set myself up for a career after I graduate, or at least have something to add to my resume that pertained more to my degree than serving drinks. I needed to start rapidly saving money. I needed to get more involved, as this was my last chance.
I also needed to find a way to come to terms with the fact that the days of stepping onto a softball field competitively were quickly trickling down. The sport I had been playing since the age of 3 was no longer going to be a way I could identify myself, rely on for a break or use to meet new people.
But what about the fun? How does one schedule fun into an already busy week or while attempting to digest all the changes that were quickly approaching? Well, in my personal opinion, it seemed impossible. Or at least I hadn’t found a way to yet.
I can already feel the nostalgia of my earlier years of college – the days hanging out with friends constantly, the random deep talks with dorm roommates, or late-night activities ending up in the most random places and meeting people who would turn out to be lifelong friends. It was an interesting time when most of us got our first taste of freedom, but without the responsibilities of being a full-fledged adult.
It was reckless, carefree and fun with less at stake.
The reality of the world I’m about to enter is hitting me hard. The rush to line up a job, or even figure out what job I want, along with potentially moving out of the college town I’ve called home for so long, all circle around me to a point of overwhelm that I wasn’t expecting. It’s finally time to start taking the degree I’ve been working for the past three years, and do something with it, which, believe me, is a beast of its own.
“But have fun. Remember to have fun,” echoes in my ears. I had been thinking there was no time for fun until I realized something that took the weight off of balancing both sides of my last year of college.
While the type of “fun” may not be the reckless kind we’ve experienced through our previous years of college, there’s still a type of “fun” that we all have yet to discover.
This fun is within those activities, classes or jobs. This fun is in the small moments with roommates, seeing them in passing throughout the day, or the people in class joking around about homework assignments and how lost everyone is just a few weeks into school.
As we all get older, we start to realize that the fun is in the little moments. We’ll still have those out-of-the-blue, crazy weekends like we used to. But the fun of setting yourself up for success while flexing a subtle smile through snippets of your day is one worth noting, even if it doesn’t feel as crazy as it used to.
Maybe one day down the line, we’ll look back at these stressful days of senior year and reminisce on the nostalgia of just being a college student one last time.
