This morning I showed up to my 8:30 class at approximately 8:29, to find all the seats filled except those in the back row. I quickly found some friends and took a seat, but I felt uneasy, as I am typically early and prepared for a seat front and center. This was a professor I hadn’t had in a department I am not familiar with. I quickly began to plan how I would steal someone’s seat closer to the front before the next class or participate more than usual so the professor would know I was engaged, even from the back row. In the midst of my plotting, one of my friends looked back at me and said, “That’s a second semester senior right there.”
I began to think about the implications of that title, and the same feelings of anxiety mixed with confidence and a dash of sadness crept back in. The reality is settling in that my time at Furman is coming to an end in just 115 days, 17 hours, and 57 minutes (and counting). I know I may sound like a broken record, and I will never stop being made fun of by my friends, but I will cling to these sentimental lasts and unsettling uncertainties right up until they hand me that diploma.
This is a good kind of uncertainty. There is an expectancy in these bittersweet moments, an eagerness for this new journey to begin, this journey that I have spent my past four years preparing for. Yes, a year from now, things will most certainly look very different than they do now. But for now, I will sit in the back of the classroom with my friends and enjoy this education I am so thankful to receive. I will stay up past my “bedtime” because the best conversations seem to happen with the perfect combination of delirium and lots of coffee. I will cheer on my classmates as the future doctors and artists and writers and teachers and historians and world changers make plans to do just that…change the world.
So, here’s to you Class of 2016–high school or college, it does not matter. You are feeling similar feelings and experiencing similar experiences. Whether your plans include moving into Furman for the next four years or moving out after you blinked and four years went by, live in this uncertainty. Learn, grow, and don’t be afraid of the conversations at 2 in the morning that just might change this world. What will you do with these next 115 days?