When Senior Year Attacks: Where has the time gone?

By: Kate Howard
Posted In: Opinion

This week, the thin blue books that signal the imminent close of one semester and registration for the next were distributed across campus. Seniors gladly ran to McAuley and the mailroom to look at the options for what will be their final semester at Salve.

Our final semester.

Does this scare the hell out of anyone else?

No, I don’t mean picking my classes or trying to get rid of that pesky Business hold I’ve had on my account every semester since freshman year. (Who pays tuition anyway? I mean, really?) What I mean is the realization that all this will end.

Once upon a time, I was among the many maladjusted freshmen that would have attempted to scale barbed wire doused in lard to get out of Miley Hall for good. Transfer applications were strewn knee-deep across a room that was already becoming difficult to navigate. Then suddenly, something happened that truly surprised me.

I began to love this place.

Frequent jaunts to the Cliffwalk, late-night takeout, weekend parties and movie nights with the girls replaced tough first roommates, homesickness, boredom and loneliness. I found friends that I love, friends that in turn helped me to love this school. Although I’ve lost that same closeness with a few of those friends through new dorms, new houses, and the twists and turns our lives have taken over the past few years, these friends molded my college experiences and they molded me, through their influence, into the person I am and the person I’m glad I’m not.

The part of all this that frightens me is how close it is to being over. How badly I used to want it to end, and what I would be willing to pay to turn back the clock to relive the events and emotions of just one more Salve semester and not have to leave my friends. Once we leave this safety net, where we are surrounded by familiar faces and beautiful places, we are really truly on our own, for the first time.

Some of us may argue we have been on our own since we first left home and stepped foot on Ochre Point Ave. over three years ago. Some of us may leave and return to the comforts of home for a couple years till we get on our feet and land that dream job. But, the fact remains that you and I will no longer be college students thinking about where we might be going.

You and I will be graduates who are on our way.

We may not know where that road will take us. I don’t know what kind of scenery lines my road, or if I will end up anywhere near that spot on the map I thought I was headed to. What matters is that I’m going, and for all of us, it’s an open road for miles. I always did have a lousy sense of direction, but some of my life’s most interesting moments have occurred out of being unexpectedly lost. A lack of direction might seem scary at first, but even if it’s unclear, you still know you’re going somewhere, and something exciting is sure to happen during the trip.

So I plan to get lost, frequently and significantly, and where I end up is simply where I’ll be.

Until graduation, I plan to do next semester what I hope all of us will do: live, learn, and love.