My freshman year was only a few weeks ago. Or at least that’s what it feels like.
In all actuality, it was three years ago, and I’m currently three months in to my senior year. The year 2025 felt entirely too far away as I filled out my application for college all those “weeks” ago, and now suddenly I’m registering for classes that will take place in the very semester I thought would forever be years away — my last one.
Freshman-year me was a completely different person. I still have the same color hair, the same affection for English and literature classes, and the same love of every dog I pass on my way to class. But my face has changed. My favorite songs have changed. My closet has more fabric allotted to each article of clothing than 19-year-old me would’ve ever agreed to. I don’t automatically check the bottom shelf when I’m buying drinks. Frontal lobe development is a funny thing.
Despite all the things I’ve strayed away from that I partook in my freshman year, one thing has come back around like a relentless boomerang: the fear of missing out. Coming into college knowing no one but the roommates I had met on Facebook three months prior was a more-than-uncertain scenario. They all found their own groups of friends much easier and quicker than I did, and FOMO crept in like the black mold in the dorm rooms of the old Tutweiler building. I felt like I had to go out and make all these memories, even when I didn’t want to. With my entire college ahead of me, I already felt this unrelenting pressure to squeeze in as many memories as possible.
But as my Degree Works became more and more full, my feelings of FOMO started to become more and more fleeting. I’ve found that my favorite memories I’ve made are the ones I never planned on, the ones I never feared of missing out on in the first place.
Now, I count my time until graduation at Alabama by months instead of semesters to make the short time I have left feel a little bit longer. Though I accomplished all the major freshman feats like running through the Student Center fountain and trekking to the upper bowl each and every home game weekend, I still feel as though I have so much ground left to cover. Suddenly, places I never felt the need to go are now on a bucket list that I feel forced to check off. The little dive bar 20 miles off campus that my friends told me about seems like a blast, but it never felt important until now, when I only have so much time left to go.
It’s almost like an impending doom that comes with crossing the stage for graduation in Coleman Coliseum — the fear that once we complete our degrees, we sign off on losing our youth as well. It feels that college is the only time in our lives we can really live to the fullest, but that is simply not true. Just because we lose access to an ACT Card and sorority meal plans doesn’t mean we lose access to any and all fun.
So why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to achieve our youthful dreams in a four-year timeframe? Twenty-two is all too young of an age to feel like we need to have accomplished all the enjoyable aspects of life.
It may not be the same experience as our undergraduate years. The same piling into a car in the middle of the night with friends you’ve just met hours prior with no set direction on your GPS, or the same sitting in the middle of your best friend’s floor getting ready for a football game wearing every one of your roommates’ clothes but your own. But checking off your life’s to-do list is still possible. It’s a big claim coming from an inveterate introvert, but even turtles come out of their shells to see the world every now and again.
Post-grad is not a prison. It’s a period of self-reflection, of figuring things out, of finding a job or finding joy. There is no finite timeline for when we’re allowed to have fun, but rather societally set constraints. Graduation is inevitable. A time will come when our lives are no longer social functions every night and a set class schedule. A time will come when we settle into a new groove, fit into a new group and find a way to make memories even better than the ones we thought were our favorites.
Our four years in college are a time to cherish, but they do not mark the end of our prime entirely. They’re merely a prologue to a greater part of the stories of our youth.
