Here I am, having complained all winter about a lack of snow, when suddenly a big snowstorm pulls through and I can’t be pleased. “Too little, too late, winter! Don’t come through now,” I want to add with a dramatic finger shaking. A return to cooler temperatures and snow makes me feel like we’re working backwards and Winter Term will never end, a veritable nightmare to be sure.
Despite my complaining, we’re within spitting distance of Spring Term and another academic year wrapping up. While that is all fine and good, and definitely worth celebration, I will also make a shameless plug in acknowledging that it is also, for some, the end of a college career. Already! I’m feeling a little conflicted.
On the one hand, an endless term of overcast days and early sunsets leads me to will time to fast-forward. I am momentarily convinced that I am ready and able to take on the real world, guided by naïve optimism about job security and a still-inflated idealism for the future (a bubble that is sure to burst sooner than later). On the other hand, with the final term in my sights, I want to put it all on pause and hold on for just a little bit longer. I am sure there is absolutely no way I can create a foolproof game plan in 10 weeks from dust and loose aspirations.
Rather than pick a side, to either embrace some vague idea of freedom and responsibility or hold on to what is within my control, I’ll instead put on the rose-tinted glasses of a soon-to-be-graduate and offer some unnecessary, overdone advice on “getting out” to enjoy the rest of the year and really “being present” in the moment.
As we’ve figured out by now, you’ll still survive if you put off for another day those noble intentions of researching for a paper (extra points for setting those intentions in the first place) because you had a three-hour dinner in the Commons, stayed up watching too many Netflix episodes, or simply got lost in the depths of the VR. There are always responsibilities and deadlines, conflicts to work through and negotiations to be made, but the space between them is bigger than we allow, so embrace it.