I Hate Being a Senior

Julianna Concepcion | Opinion Writer

work from home / Photo by 'Wdnld', licensed by Envato.com

Being a senior kind of sucks. Time has sped past me, and while I’m happy to have had such amazing experiences in my first three years, my fourth year's been kind of sucky. Grad school applications, twenty-page writing samples, directed research—it's making my upcoming graduation feel too real. I’ve worked hard enough to deserve the degree, yes, but what of the friends I’ve made, connections I’ve fostered, and my relationship to Willimantic itself? 

Since I was born and raised in Windham, my goodbye to Eastern feels like a goodbye to my adolescence. I won’t be here much longer and that’s scary. I might go to Mass, or New York, or wherever else the wind takes me—but I won’t be here. I could have never imagined that I would have been admitted into Eastern in the first place as a Windham High School student with a 2.3 GPA, but as a senior with a whopping 3.8 (is that a humble brag?), and I never could have imagined the changes I’ve gone through. 

When I first started at Eastern, it was through the STEP/CAP program. For all six weeks, I was anticipating and dreading the next four years of my life. And at first, I did. No friends, no connections, and hardly any grasp of where each academic building was. But eventually, my experiences got better and better. I slowly came to realize that I had a place in my respective field of English, that I had space to speak and write. Even now as I write this for The Campus Lantern, I feel validated. 

I don’t think I could have possibly seen it coming when the years simply came and went, a blur of fun, sadness, and good conversation with the most interesting people I have ever met. How cruel is that?  

What I’m saying without actually saying it is, Eastern is great. I have had the privilege of staying in my hometown, inspired by my own surroundings that I have grown up with but have been only recently able to see the beauty of. Say what you want about this school—you can hate on the budget cuts, the changes in our programs, hell, you can definitely hate on its diversity (that’s getting better, I suppose).  

But you probably won’t remember most of that. What you’ll probably remember, like me, is the like-minded people you’ve met and loved, and maybe you’ll even remember the day you walked on the stage picture-by-picture. And if you hated your experience here, I feel for you—but there will come better days, weeks, months, and years where you feel the same way about wherever you’ve ended up. And I think that’s nice.