Senior Sendoff: an introduction to the rest of your life

Ah senior year…a time to truly buckle down and reflect on these past four years with gratitude. To spread your Eagle wings and set off on the next chapter of your grown up lives and look back fondly with pride… it didn’t work well in high school, why would it work now? Senior year, no matter if you are a antsy little high schooler ready to bust on out of your parents house and onto the sprawling campuses that god’s green earth—or rather, mom and dad’s green cash—has invested in, or a Senior in college…its quite frankly both horrififingly dumbfounding and terrifying to be smack with the age old question: “Am I ready for this?”

AU students tend to rush through life, I know I have, constantly “wonkifying” themselves to the ultimate. Interning on the hill this semester, while double majoring in P0litical Science and Communication but maybe I secretly want to audition for an acapella group, but then there’s a side of me that always wanted to be in Greek life…oh gosh do I even have time for friends? Friends…maybe I should make a TV show while I’m here! And then I’ll blog about it…while I am abroad.

We tend to map out our existence like the thought processies of feeble mouse on speed. Always wanting to do more in such little time spans, we can never get enough. Until Senior year, we stop and realize this is enough. This is the end of the road when I need to do it all and do it well. The horrifying reality of “I’m getting too old for this s***” also can be a frightening thing when waiting outside at a club or a crowded house party just doesn’t cut it anymore. Let alone realizing you have to get up early for your job the next day and the Freshman, with her whole life to forget, most likely doesn’t.

It’s a life of give and take when you enter Senior year, and I have only just experienced week two of it. With the great accomplishment of finally being the oldest on campus, knowing the in’s and out’s of how AU works and how to survive, comes great responsibility…as cliche as it sounds.  With only being in the first semester of the rest of our lives, we are now seeing the reality of who we are as students and who AU made us into. This final year is the end result and hopefully, for this senior class, it is just the beginning of the rest of our lives.