The five people you’ve never kissed, but have always wanted to. The five people you would most like to go on a date with before you graduate, but have never asked. The five girls you’ve always had a crush on. The five boys that got away. Whatever way you look at it, the “Senior Five,” as it’s come to be called at BC, is as real a thing as you and your friends want it to be. Maybe it’s not a priority or a main subject of thought for you, or maybe it’s all you think about and talk to your roommates about. Regardless, it has inevitably crossed the minds of each and every member of the class of 2013. Maybe even the minds of underclassmen who are already thinking forward to their last hurrahs and conquests, and back on their missed opportunities and failed wingman adventures.
In my mod, it has been at the forefront of conversation. Even if as a joke from my not-so-single roommates, it is never uncommon to hear talk of “he’s in my senior five,” or “he is definitely senior five-worthy, isn’t he?” And guys are guilty of it, too. Just recently I had a conversation with a friend asking me if I thought a certain girl was worth putting on his senior five. My answer: think about it carefully. Deciding on a list of five is an important exercise of patience and hindsight, and it’s a decision you can’t make again if you don’t make it right.
Maybe it’s the girl that always used to study in the Fitzaga lounge freshmen year that you always tried really hard in front of but who never really noticed you. You saw her all the time – hell, you pretty much had her study lounge schedule down pat. But then she got an 8-man. And then she went abroad. And then you went abroad. And now you have a lecture class together and you live on the same floor of Rubenstein and there’s a group paper coming up. Fate? Maybe.
Or maybe it’s the guy with the deep thoughts from your Philosophy of the Person class. Or the girl from your roommate’s Appa trip. Or the guy who teaches the classes at the Plex. The girl from your sophomore year marketing class group project. The guy that always wears the Nantucket Reds. The girl that you wish wasn’t in the friend zone. Maybe it’s the guy whose ex-girlfriend you used to be intensely jealous of, or the girl that’s friends with your roommate’s girlfriend’s roommate’s boyfriend’s friend.
Your senior five can be a realistic list – a goal in the back of your mind for the five people you really think you have a chance with sometime between the first Senior Night and the May Monday morning on the roof of the parking garage– or it can be a list of the five biggest long shots you could possibly come up with. Whichever way you decide to play, flaunt it. Talk about it. Tell your roommates and let them tell their friends. If no one knows who’s on your senior five, your senior five will never know. The opportunity you missed at the vending machine in the basement of CLXF freshmen to talk to that girl from upstairs about, well, anything, will pass you by again. This time, while you’re waiting for your Busch Light draft at Mary Ann’s.
Being a senior is about being spontaneous. If not now, when? Never again will you be surrounded by this many incredible people in the same circumstances that you’re in – this many beautiful people with brains and opportunities and heads on their shoulders – this many people that also have a senior five. Have a senior five. Ask someone on a date. Buy someone a drink. Tell someone how good they look. Whether or not you’re looking for something serious in your senior year, you never know what could happen if you put yourself out there with a person you’ve always had your eye on, that you always knew you had a lot in common with or just simply want to get to know more about.
What’s the worst that could happen? They deny you, and after May you never see them again in your life? There are worse things. Put yourself out there. Don’t wait for senior week to talk to that one guy, that cute girl, that friend of a friend. You never know – they may have always felt the same way.