You’re not alone, sis.
Four years ago, I cried for the entire one hour and fifteen minute duration of the car ride to move-in day, because I was fearful of this new chapter of my life. I had grown up with the same forty people in the same small, farm town for eighteen years.
I asked my mom earnestly, “What if I don’t make any friends?”
Four years later, I cry for a different reason.
I have been labeled the nostalgic, sentimental one of my friend group. At this point in the year, my roommate could be eating a ham sandwich and I would comment that it reminded me of freshman year in some way. I read F. Scott Fitzgerald in excess, write poetry when I should be brushing up on French tenses, and, subsequently, I romanticize everything.
I do incredibly poorly with endings, as most often I am unable to view them as new beginnings until much later on. Retrospectively, these past four years have been the best and worst four years of my life. I do not want this article to be one littered with clichés and sappy thank yous and goodbyes. Rather, I am going to try my best to articulate how I feel Holy Cross, and these four, bittersweet years have given me.
I feel it to be a complete scam that we have so many years with people we are, often, forced to be friends with in elementary school, middle school, and high school, and so few with the ones we are able to choose in college (not to diss my friends from home––I love you). However, whether it’s my freshman year roommate, a boy who drunkenly hit me with a Frisbee in the hallway of my first dorm, abroad friends who know everything about me down to my Goth phase circa 2008, or randomly assigned junior year post-abroad roommates, I was able to choose who from this class of 2019 I opened myself up to. I was able to choose whom I wanted to be a significant part of my formative years.
Before college, I was a timid follower who did not know how to think and speak for myself. With college came the ability to consider difficult topics, and to write and think analytically. More importantly, with college came courage and sense of self. With college came mistakes (and I mean monumental ones), hung-over mornings, academic blunders, and apologizing to my friends for excessive tears over a boy who couldn’t even decide what he wanted to eat for breakfast in the morning. However, with college also came ceaseless laughter, recapping a bar night’s events with my best friends the next morning, realizing I was too good to wait around for that boy who couldn’t decide, and friends who love me even when I become unnecessarily sentimental…like now, for example.
At present, I have yet to find a job I would like to pursue after graduation. Normally something like this would thrust me into a crisis (one involving excessive phone calls to my parents, in conjunction with copious amounts of M&Ms and Gossip Girl reruns). However, I am in no rush to make such an enormous decision—one that will inevitably jumpstart my career and professional life.
Or, maybe I’m just saying that as a coping mechanism as I slowly watch my friends become employed day by day. Regardless, I have come to learn that one thing is certain—you don’t need to have everything figured out at twenty-two. Be gentle with yourself, and realize that everyone has his or her own timeline for success.
I have no desire for these four years to come to a close because I will never again be in the same location as all of my favorite people. Yet, I take solace in knowing the people who are meant to stay in my life, will. I plan to cherish the next month, and reminisce on the whirlwind blur that has been the past four years.
If you’re a senior, I encourage you to do the same. If you’re an underclassmen, I urge you to take every opportunity to go insane with your friends—because soon, you’ll be pulling an all-nighter, surrounded by the people you love the night before graduation, wondering where all the time went.