My friend and I were recently shopping in Boulder, looking for a pair of jeans. We walked into this store and instead of looking at the jeans, we were looking at all of the white dresses that were hung against the walls. There were 20 different types of white dress with varying lengths, fabric, sleeve cut.
“This would be a great place to shop for graduation,” my friend said.
“We’ll have to think about that soon,” I said, and the two of us looked at each other, eyes wide with terror. Graduation wasn’t that soon, right? There’s no way we only had one year left, right?
Wrong.
The rest of the day I questioned, “where did the time go?” How had it been three years of college already, when the first day of freshman year was what felt like a week ago? Right now, I’m feeling the opposite of senioritis: I’m wondering about all the things I could’ve done with another few years in school. I didn’t want to go into the ‘real world,’ I wanted to stay in an environment where the only thing I really had to worry about was my grades and my part-time jobs.
I had a similar experience in high school, and before I went abroad last semester. Although I’m always excited for the change in front of me, now I’m more fearful of it. Things are going pretty good in my life– why would I want to change it up and give myself an opportunity for disaster? It takes me a long time to transition from one setting to another, I yearn for what I had even if the new reality is just as pleasant. I’ve tried to let go of this mindset and recognize change as an important growth process, but it’s an evergoing process.
Which leads me back to being a junior in college, wishing I was a freshman again. I know some people have the complete opposite feelings as I do and want to be done with school, which makes it a bit harder to connect with them. I have friends who are graduating a semester (or even a year early), and I can’t help but think, “why would you want to get out of here even earlier?”
My pre-senior-year freakout has already started. In about a year, things are going to be completely different with a new job and new responsibilities. I have no intention of living in either Boulder or my hometown, Greeley, so I’ll be learning street names and nearby grocery stores again. There will be new challenges, but also new things to fall in love with.
Through all this anxiety of the future as the years progress, I’m nervous; but I also know that something else comes with anxiety: excitement.