It’s both freeing and painful to admit that I didn’t look forward to returning to Kenyon for senior year with the same vigor as I had at the end of past summers.
A vague feeling of dread surrounding my final year haunted me in the months preceding my arrival, and, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. I had always loved Kenyon. In fact, I consider it just as much of a “home” as Chicago, where I spent the first 18 years of my life. So why, I would ask myself, was I feeling this strange melancholy? Why was my first instinct, whenever someone brought up Kenyon, to change the subject of conversation?
This dread came as such a surprise to me because it seemed antithetical to my involvement and passion for the Kenyon community. I’ve spent the last three years pouring myself into both appreciating the positives that Kenyon has to offer and fighting to eradicate its institutionalized inequalities that prevent it from reaching its full potential. In essence, I’ve put most of what I have to offer, both personally and professionally, into this community.
An explanation for these feelings of dread didn’t become clear to me until I actually arrived on campus. I realized, at this point, that I’m in that liminal transition phase where my heart is simultaneously devoted to Kenyon and impatient for what’s next. In short, my attachment to, and sense of purpose within the Kenyon community, is changing rapidly as the “real world” phase of life approaches.
Since I’ve been back on campus and openly acknowledging to myself that I have mixed emotions about the approaching end of my Kenyon career, I’ve been better able to understand where my feelings of dread came from. They arose from two irreconcilable desires-a desire to stay in the safe haven of college for many more years, and a desire to be done already, out in the “real world”, pursuing my passions on my own terms.
Previously, I couldn’t fathom how I managed to feel both these longings simultaneously, and the confusion placed a cloud of anxiety over the prospect of my senior year. Now that I understand where my feelings of dread came from, I’m trying to let go and dive into the liminality, uncertainty, and confusion that characterizes one’s senior year of college. I’ve always been one to try to plan my life out, but now, just like all of my peers, I’m in a year-long period of change and transition. There’s dread where there used to be excitement, but there’s also readiness where there used to be fear. I’m trying to take in the duality of it all, and realizing that I can simultaneously feel ready for the end of this chapter and completely unwilling to leave it behind. I want to want four more years at Kenyon, like I always used to. I want the college years to feel like a portion of my life that will never end, like they did up until this past summer. But I don’t want four more years, and I can already feel the ending. I’m ready to have an amazing last year, but I know it’s meant to be the last one, and I’m ready for whatever is next.