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Life

When You Have to Take a 5th Year of College

Alexandra Oslowski
Emily Myint
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at SDSU chapter.

Senior year of college.  A time filled with the last times. Last recruitment, last home football game, last round of midterms, last late-night run to Trujillo’s, last sorority formal. It’s a very strange feeling to be in the middle of your fourth year of college, yet know you have a whole year to go before you walk across any graduation stage. 

 

If you had asked me 3 years ago as a freshman at UC Santa Cruz if I would be okay with staying one extra year to get my degree, I would’ve said you were out of your mind. High school was already a tough four years, and I was not about to make college take any longer than it needed to be. No way I would do it.

 

Then life hit and it hit me hard. I transferred schools after being miserable at the first one, got my acceptance rescinded from San Diego State a month before move-in, was forced to take a semester off college in order to get to State at all, and then got here only to be faced with the reality that I needed to graduate a year late in order to earn my Journalism degree. Yeah, a lot to swallow as a 19-year-old. It’s hard watching all my friends get ready to finish college and enter the working world.

 

I realized that like it or not, I wasn’t graduating in 2020. Being honest, I wasn’t happy about it at first. Couldn’t I get a break? And then I decided to look at it differently. I had extra time for everything I wanted to do but felt like I couldn’t.

 

Having time is an interesting power. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the same rush like everyone else. I can relax when looking for a job, enjoy another year in my sorority, even study abroad for a whole semester. I can participate in more clubs and better balance my workload each semester. A lot of friends are still graduating when I am.

 

Most importantly, I realized how to make the best of a situation. Even though this was never what I would’ve imagined my life being, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. For better or for worse, I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Alexa is an Art and Journalism student at San Diego State University. A true California native, she loves sunshine, being outdoors, and road trips. Her passions include photography, activism, traveling, writing, drawing, and all things creative. She is a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, the Photo Editor for The Daily Aztec Newspaper, and currently feeding her caffeine addiction as a barista. You can probably find me behind my camera, on Twitter, or perfecting my latte art at Starbucks.
Emily is the Campus Correspondent for Her Campus SDSU. She is a 4th year journalism student from Chicago, IL. At SDSU, she is in Kappa Delta, is the Social Media Director of Rho Lambda and the Vice President Membership of Order of Omega. Emily's favorite hobbies are dancing, online shopping, planning out her Instagram feed, blogging and going to Disneyland. On a daily basis, you can find her glued to her laptop writing blog posts and editing Youtube videos. In the future, she wants to work for the Walt Disney Company on their social media marketing and communications corporate team. Emily's strong passion for digital media & content creation makes her very proud to be a member of the Her Campus team!