If you are a senior and anything like me, then you probably spent your summer not only working constantly to ensure you had enough money in the bank for the year, but also endlessly worrying about what you are going to do after graduation. It’s a question we have been asked thousands of times since we started here as freshmen, but I don’t think any of us have ever truly sat down and planned for our lives after graduation in a real sense.

Now that we are all back on campus, it’s time to only plan for our futures, and to take part in all the “lasts” that college has to offer—the good and the bad. It’s the last time we are moving into a dorm with all of our friends, the last time we will fight for parking on campus, the last time we will eat at Bartels or stand in line for forever at Sandella’s. It’s the last time we will register for classes as undergrads, the last time we celebrate Spring Weekend, and the last time that all of us are in the same place.
Graduating high school can be bittersweet, too; you’ve just spent 12 years with your classmates and you formed lifelong (or so you thought) friendships. Graduating and going your separate ways to colleges in different states was terrifying, but, if you’re like I was, you were so excited to be done with everything else that your nervous feelings fade away.
The good thing about graduating high school is that all through undergrad, everyone comes home. They come home for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, for Spring Break and for Summer Break. You get to see all your friends because you have home in common.
So what happens after you graduate college? What happens when all of your best friends live in different states and are going to different places? We no longer have a common reason to go home to anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I am excited to graduate this May. But to the Class of 2016: cherish these memories. No matter how you plan to spend your year, whether you will be filling out graduate school applications or just studying to make it through to graduation—don’t stress out too much and don’t let it get the best of you. Enjoy every minute you have left on campus because at one point, you couldn’t wait to get here.

Don’t lock yourself in your room with Netflix every night because you’re going to miss this. As cliché as it sounds, these are some of the best days of your life and, someday, you’re going to want these days back. Take the opportunities to spend as much time with your friends now, while you have it. Go explore downtown, go to events on campus, and get to know new people, because, come May, this world won’t be ours anymore. Come May, it’ll be time to be a “grown up,” and no one knows what’s going to happen or where everyone is going to be.