When you first get to college, everybody tries to tell you what to do.  

Don’t live with your best friend from high school.

Ramen is your friend.

Double major.

Don’t skip class.

Those four years (or 3, or 3 and a half, or however long you spend in college) will fly by.

And most importantly, that allotted time is going to be the best time of your life. So enjoy it.

We all brush things like that off, thinking to ourselves that we won’t make any of the classic mistakes, because we’re smarter than that. We’re going to branch out, join clubs, and make friends. We’re going to do all our homework the day we get it, because there is no way we are ever going to procrastinate. And we are never, ever going to skip class, even if we’re bleeding internally or suffering from mono.

And as for the last two, we don’t have to worry about that yet. We’ve got so much time. Four years is a lot longer than it sounds like. It’ll all be fine.

And gradually, as we’re sitting in 3-hour-long night classes about the history of the Internet, or waking up at 8:40 to get to class at 9, or pounding the 5-Hour Energy at 2am to stay awake and finish that paper we could have totally started earlier, we forget all those things. We forget to slow down. We forget to see the big picture. We forget that one day, all of this is going to be over.

And then suddenly you’re a second-semester senior and graduation is staring you in the face, and you realize you actually have no idea what to do. You have to actually apply to graduate? What if you somehow missed something and you can’t? How do you order gowns? Do gowns come in sizes? Are you moving back home? What if you don’t get a job after?

In all the movies, college graduation looks awesome. You don’t have to care about anything, you get a diploma, and somebody gives you a job right away. You effortlessly move into some cool apartment and life just unfolds beautifully in front of you. Nobody is ever scared or unsure or nervous. Nobody is ever afraid they’re going to fail. Nobody actually tells you about any of those feelings. But they happen.

I applied to graduate a few weeks ago. I brought my form to the office they told me to go to, and I got lost trying to figure out where to go. I wound up accidentally walking into the same room the freshman go to when they have to get their student ID pictures taken. And as I was looking at all of them, wearing their lanyards around their necks and holding their orientation folders, I was right there with them again. Eighteen years old, trying too hard to pretend I already knew what I was doing.

It really does fly by. If you’re a college undergrad and somebody tells you that, believe them, because it’s true. And if you are graduating or you already have, and you find yourself telling that to someone else, you’ll probably remember brushing it off when somebody first said that to you. But it happens. And you don’t realize that it happens until it’s happening to you.

I am graduating this December. I don’t have to register for spring classes. I don’t have any more ‘college summers’. My Thanksgiving break is going to be full of my relatives asking me what I want to do and if I have a job yet. My Christmas break doesn’t exist, because I’ll be done with school and won’t have to go back after the holidays. My New Year’s Resolution is going to be to find a ‘real adult job’.  But if other people can do well in the world, so can I. And so can everybody else.

College really has been the best time of my life, for a lot of reasons. Sure, I made friends and gained a lot of independence, but I learned a lot of life lessons that are going to be the things that carry me through the rest of my life, wherever that takes me.

One bad day isn’t going to derail your entire future.

If somebody doesn’t like you, find somebody else who does.

Sometimes you will want to give up, because something gets hard. But don’t.

Struggling and eventually succeeding is better than avoiding your problems.

It’s okay to be scared.

And most importantly, don’t forget about the big picture. Because everything you do is a little piece of who you are.

To all my fellow seniors out there, we’re going to be okay.

-Intern Emily