As graduation approaches and many peers, friends, and even family begin their professional lives, soon-to-be upperclassmen are being faced with the reality that very soon, they too will be leaving their college campuses and becoming full blown adults.
When you’re in college, it feels like time doesn’t exist. Nights spent staying up until 3 in the morning, days spent sleeping, afternoons spent going out to concerts and dinners and having long conversations with close friends. There are no true responsibilities. College students get this bizarre chance to just live with little to no restrictions and even revert to their inner child all while being fed, housed, and taught by an active college campus with academics buzzing, students walking from class to class, and weeks flying by. College is a controlled environment with uncontrollable desires for adventure, fun, and enjoyment. But now, reality starts set in. Soon it’ll all be gone, and we’ll all be struggling 20-something-year-olds who reminisce on “the good ol’ days.”
But college is transformative, just as much as it is a terrific time to be young. It’s a time to learn yourself, what you like, what you don’t like, and who it is you want to be. You learn what inspires you, moves you, and all together bores you. This is growing up: Experiencing, learning, and feeling, all in the short period of 4 years of blissful ignorance to the real working world around you.
College is where you move on from the past and grow past the person you used to be. We enter college at 18 and 19, bright eyed freshman with high school minds, and we should be exiting with a college degree, a feeling of enlightenment, and little to no expectations of the future. Of course, we hope that our graduating seniors possess all the excitement in the world and a newfound knowledge of what it means to work hard, but more than anything, we hope that they leave changed.
Change is a challenge that faces us all at multiple points in our lives, but I believe that college is the time for us to change the most. At least, it is likely the easiest time. With our nontraditional schedules, long weekends, and malleable frontal lobes, we are poised to grow quickly in our thoughts, ideas, and perceptions.
Use your time in college to become open-minded. Graduation is coming soon. The end of our glory days is growing near. Soon you may not have time, energy, or even desire to change. Take advantage of this unique in-between and make the most of what you’re taught, not only in the classroom, but by the equally educated people around you. You can learn something new every day, just by being ready to admit that you don’t know it all and that someone can change your mind by just a single conversation.
So make your friends, make your memories, grow up, grow within, and move on. Become the best version of yourself in college. Take your time during this life season because it only lasts so long, and you don’t want to miss out on the beautiful changes that can occur in a few years. Even though adulting is lingering on the horizon, take college as a growing period that will eventually, without you even knowing it, prepare you for that future. And when you reach that future, you’ll be ready to move on, just like how you moved on from high school and conquered the next big thing, college.