Making Up for Lost Time

Image by Joan Kwamboka

A year and a half ago, I was a sophomore in college just making friends and falling into the comfort I finally made for myself in college. Just a couple of weeks ago, I watched some of those friends walk the stage and graduate. I hadn’t seen a lot of them in over a year. We were dotted across the state due to the pandemic, and as things fade back to normalcy, I’m now going to be the one graduating.

I didn’t expect a quarter of my college experience to be done from Zoom or that I’d be over the moon about getting a shot, but sometimes life surprises us. Going into college I had a long list of things I wanted to do before I graduated: go to karaoke with my friends, walk to get dollar beers after class, jump in the fountain, take a midnight tour of campus, and other unmentionables. Now I’m left with only one year to make up for lost time.

If I’m honest, I’m terrified to go into my last year of college. I’m a senior. It freaks me out even saying it. While I know it’s not the reality, it feels like I have just one year to get my life in order, make all of the memories I wanted while still preparing for the real world. Senior year is supposed to be the most fun, but also seems to be the most stressful. There is so much to balance that I was already overwhelmed going into this summer.

Since a sense of normalcy is around the corner, I’ve begun seeing family and friends who are fully vaccinated and the questions always arises of what I want to do after college. I know what I want to do, but what I will actually do is a whole other story. The unsettling stress of finding full-time jobs, being able to afford food and an apartment, and potentially moving across the country is a lot. 

The one thing I knew I was good at was overworking myself and putting too much on my plate. For once I wanted to attempt to prioritize myself, have free time, and not do so much. The countdown to graduation had already begun and I didn’t want to work away my last year of college. I was still working the internships I already had, but didn’t want to add too much on top of that.

While I constantly say I don’t want to be bogged down by work my last year of college, I know that’s unreasonable. As much as I try not to, I will inevitably overcommit and spread myself too thin. It’s something I’ve committed to working on, but it's still unlikely to actually happen. Instead I want to dive into the things I truly enjoy: the internships I have, writing more, hanging out with friends I haven’t seen in a year and a half.

I’ve been in a constant battle with myself about how much I can really prepare for what comes after graduation. I could pile on more internships or part-time jobs to prepare myself professionally and financially, but it’s exhausting. I’ve been caught up in trying to figure out what I want to do and faced with the realization that what I came to school thinking I wanted to do isn’t truly my passion. It was a difficult thing to understand, but have found what really makes me happy even if it wasn’t what I had worked towards for six years. I’ve loved writing for as long as I can remember and will continue to, but a career in journalism isn’t what I want to go into after college. I found ways to incorporate my love for writing in different ways, and I want to explore that further. I’ve found passions in advocacy and have never been so in love with something until now. 

Taking a step back from multitudes of jobs and putting 110% into the one I love, as well as balancing that with my final year of school, gives me a sense of comfort. I’m not sure what’s going to happen next May. I hope that I have a job and that I walk the stage confidently in heels. I hope I made up for the last year and a half and made memories and dumb decisions with friends. I hope that I didn’t spend my final years hyper-fixating on things I can’t control. But most importantly, I hope I’m happy and ready to take the world by the horns.

By Emma Bittner

Rom-Com fanatic and coffee connoisseur with a little bit of "I wanna save the world" in me