The Elephant in the Room: Woah, we're halfway there!

I am afraid of change and the passing of time scares me. The end of the school year always means change isn’t far away. Whether it’s taking all the posters down off your walls or moving into your house for the summer (and probably the next two years), change is scary as heck. Seniors graduate, everyone becomes a 'rising junior' or whatever like we’re some bread dough and new first-years will arrive in the fall.

As an underclassman, I was in this nice bubble where I knew I still had the majority of college ahead of me. I could mess up if I needed to and it would be okay if I didn’t have a plan for the next five years already lined up. There’s something about being a junior that makes it all seem so much more real. I’ll be a real person living in an actual house with an actual job for the summer. I’m going to be living in France for a semester, away from all my family, but luckily I’ve got some good friends coming with me. As the resident queen of anxiety, I am terrified, but while I could let the train of thought run off the rails, I’ve been keeping it under control by remembering that it is a privilege to be a college student with all the opportunities I have been given.

Although my last final paper wasn’t due until 5 p.m. on Monday, I spent a total of nine or 10 hours in the basement of Tisch on Sunday because I had an overwhelming desire to just be done. As much as I love school and all it is going to give me, I feel that I am certainly not the only one who will say that it is utterly exhausting. After this year, I am burnt out. I submitted my final paper for sociology, which was mostly me going on a feminist rant, and the weight that lifted off my chest was indescribable. Sometimes, when you’ve been in the Tisch basement for nine hours straight, you aren’t thinking so clearly anymore. I asked myself many times why I even really cared about what I was writing about. But now that I have finally seen the light of summer, I remember why it is a privilege to keep being wrung out through this system semester after semester.

In the end, when I looked at my finished product, I remembered why I cared. I care because I have an insatiable hunger for learning, I like to write about my opinions and I like to think that my life is going somewhere. While it’s terrifying to think that college is halfway over, I’d like to think of it more as a motivation to make next semester the best one yet. The same goes for the one after that. Reflecting on the year as a whole, the people I have met, the knowledge I have gained and the experiences that I have had have been remarkable. Here’s to you, Tufts.