A Senior Moment

Embracing your last college year

Carly Roye

Monday, September 13th, 2010

Even if you didn’t root for your home team and weren’t a part of all the high school hoopla, you must remember the sublime entitlement you felt on that first day of your senior year--walking on the newly buffed linoleum floor and realizing that those hallways were all yours. After three years of suffering abuse from upperclassmen and vice principals who weren’t adept enough to teach, it was finally your turn.

If you moved to New York from suburbia you know what I’m talking about. Senior year was a celebration of moving on to greener pastures. One last hurrah before the big ship off.

So where did all that excitement go?

Fast forward to the present where I’m now a senior in college. I should be on top of the world, but instead I find myself wincing every time someone asks me what year I’m in, with that same anxious face I've noticed on so many seniors at The New School.

Being a senior is supposed to be an honor. Whether that entails ruling the school as a high school senior or getting free stuff as a senior citizen, it should be treated as a privilege, not a damnation.

The final year of college should be a crowning achievement in a person’s life and cause for celebration. So why do we whimper in the corner and let our college years fizzle out like a flat Pepsi?

I’d argue that we’re just looking at it the wrong way. In high school we couldn’t wait to leave town and be free, and now we are. Sure, we’ve got bills to pay and landlords to bitch about, and yes, that’s about to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, but isn’t that what we always wanted back in high school? For everyone to leave us alone and let us do our thing?

Lately, my dad has been saying, “These are the good ol’ days.” It’s simple but true and yet it’s something we tend to forget as we get older and the years start to feel shorter. When else in our lives are we ever again going to be broke 20-somethings, living in New York, with dirty dishes piled in the sink and clothes that still smell like last night’s whiskey sour? We should enjoy it while we still can.

No matter if you throw an all weekend party extravaganza with your closest friends and acquaintances or go to Penn Station by yourself and take a train to a random destination on the map, it’s time to stop thinking about getting older and start celebrating the last years of our youth. The future will come eventually, but it’s your job to have a bag full of good memories when it gets here.

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A Senior Moment