For so many years, I idolized college students, believing that they were blissfully sipping foamy lattes, forming deep and long-lasting romantic and platonic connections, tapping away at their satisfying-sounding keyboards, and giggling on plush area rugs until 3 a.m. They were getting good grades and earning degrees, nailing that game-winning intramural goal, gleefully chasing sunsets and making memories—why shouldn’t they be? They were living in the best four years of their lives.
Attending a college (in the ‘traditional,’ in-person sense) presents students with what feels like an all-you-can-eat buffet: take your pick of stimulating academic experiences, abundant campus activities, friend groups and the blur in-between, support for post-grad endeavors, personal development opportunities and challenges to your ‘previously limited worldview,’ and so much more–and this is an opportunity I encourage us not to take for granted.
However, being grateful doesn’t mean we need to feel pressure to make our years attending undergraduate institutions the “best of our lives.” Not only does this idea bleaken thoughts of the future and subsequently “the physical, cognitive, and emotional frailties that come with age” (as Jeffrey Kluger writes in time.com’s “Why Americans Are Uniquely Afraid to Grow Old”), it can also strain our day-to-day: are we taking full advantage, really living it up?
Maybe this scarcity mindset tends to set in closer to senior year, but even so: students living under the shadow of the impending cap and gown likely feel pressures of some kind, whether to finish strong academically, nail down an answer to the well-meaning “any post-grad plans?” threat, or finish any bucket list experiences. After all, November 16 is only 196 days away from the class of 2024’s University Commencement (and now, seniors, how did reading that make you feel?).
Looking back on the past three and a half years with this in mind, it’s all too easy to have regrets. What did I miss out on? What mistakes did I make? Googling “regrets of college seniors” presents a myriad of different ways we may have gone wrong, from “trying too hard or not enough” to “not having boundaries” to “choosing the wrong major” (9+ semester seniors, we see you). While having regrets in life is, arguably, inevitable, learning from them to shape this final semester is worth intentional reflection.
These final six months for those of us graduating in May still hold room for our final pushes to an athletic PR, passing grades, grad-school acceptance notifications, participation in campus clubs and organizations, enriching personal development and widenings of worldviews, and our growth as fledgling adults squinting into the real world. We have time to make the home stretch what we want it to be.
That being said, these previous three and half years are what they have been. We can’t change moments where we said what we didn’t mean to, or the class we didn’t think we had to pay that much attention in, or the breakup you made your friends therapize about for months. We may have regrets, and that does not negate the good these collegiate years have held. Any good they have held doesn’t mean they had to have been the best years of our lives.
They are just years.
We have the privilege of attending a university that nurtures, challenges, and enriches us. Within this multitude, this kaleidoscopic experience, may lie our greatest achievements (thus far), our deepest regrets, and our most recent evolutions as humans—this doesn’t mean “the best of our lives” is nearing an end. Far from it.
So, please permit this nostalgic senior writing major a moment of sappiness: whatever college has been for you, may it rest as a monument to the best of how we’ve grown. May we face the future with courage and hope, if unanswered questions (and caffeine addictions).
May you look back and smile, and continue on still smiling.