This is something I wrote for my Writing for Journalism class at the end of my senior year of college. I'm happy to say I've done most of these things. Still wish I could have taken my own advice in a few areas.
“How to make
the most of your senior year of college”
In western society, we are constantly fed messages of
youthfulness and living each moment. We
have characters like Peter Pan, and phrases like “carpe diem,” “No day but
today” from the musical “Rent,” and most recently, the forever-tweeted #YOLO
(You only live once).
While these messages can be overbearing, they do hold some
valued truth. We obsess with youth because as a society we are afraid of old
age and eventual death. Perhaps more deeply than this, we are afraid that we
will fade away and not make an impact on the world in the short time we are
here.
So what can we do? We cannot neither slow down nor rewind
time, at least not yet. What we can do, is make the most of the time we have. So
here it is: how to make the most of your senior year of college.
The first step is to purchase a planner in August right
before your senior year. If you’re overly tech-savvy, you can just make one in
Gmail or on your iPad. Set your big dates on there first: birthdays, holidays,
last day of classes, that pretentious indie concert, your friend’s 21st
birthday, and all that jazz. Then, once you get your class syllabi, go through
and write down all the due dates for tests, essays, and exams. If you are
really meticulous, highlight each class a different color.
From there, maybe on the notes page, create a weekly
schedule. Write the days of the week across the top and the times (8 AM, 9 AM,
10 AM and so on) down the side. Then begin to fill in your calendar with blocks
of time for each event. Highlight your classes in one color, your work in
another color, and your extracurricular activities/meetings in a third color.
This will help you have a set schedule so that you can fill
in the holes with time for yourself, time for friends, your workout routine,
and anything else that might pop up. So now you have a calendar, and a better
sense of how much free time you will or will not have.
The second piece of advice is to make a bucket list for the
year. Go crazy as possible, then hone in on what is a little more realistic so
that you don’t disappoint yourself when you don’t get to everything. If you
want to make it more interactive, you can go on bucketlist.org and create one
that your friends can see.
The third piece of advice is to make an on-going to do list;
preferably in the same place you keep your notes for class or close to your
bucket list. This list will not cease
to exist. Just accept it, and get over it. For each item, mark the date you
wrote it down, and the date you would ideally like to have it finished by. You
will not finish it all on time, but this prioritizing will help you keep your
sanity and prevent it all from piling together at once.
The last “preparatory” step that you can really do before
the year starts is to create a budget. This is extremely difficult, especially
for college students who spend more money on alcohol than on food,
realistically. Making a loose budget will help you not panic, divided into as
many or few categories as you please, will really help you not panic about your
finances and will make great practice
for the future when loans start coming in.
In a perfect world, those four pieces are started a week
ahead of your first day of school. Yeah right, but let’s just pretend. From
here, you can move into a daily routine. On that very first day, do what works
for you, but really try to wake yourself up each morning “seizing the day”. About.com’s
Physical Therapy section shows that those who stretch in the morning have
increased mobility and blood flow throughout the day. This also lets you breathe;
think about the tasks and activities on the schedule for that day.
Another step to your “daily” routine would be to arrive a
few minutes early to each class. On a professional level, senior year is about
making connections so that you can essentially get a job after graduating. This
often comes from working with professors. Networking becomes an astronomical
part of this process. If you do not have one already, create a LinkedIn
profile. If you really want to get yourself out there, make a website. Wix.com
will let you make one for free and all you have to pay for is a cheap domain
name. Go can also go to vistaprint.com to get extremely cheap business cards. Use
all three of these tools to network. You can even use LinkedIn to see an actual
map of all your connections, using inmaps.linkedinlabs.com.
According to Professor Sherri Culver of Temple University,
true networking comes from actual friendships, not using someone else’s
connections for your own professional self-gain. How perfect and lucky then for
you. This goes along with the next step to making your senior year worth it:
spending time with your closest friends, taking time to meet new ones, and
working to catch up with old ones.
One very important aspect of senior year to learn,
especially if you have a capstone, is to not take on too much. For many,
freshman and sophomore year are all about spreading your wings and getting
involved in campus as much as possible. Come senior year, it is time to just be
involved in one or two activities you love, and replace the time dedicated to
the others with time for yourself.
Taking time for yourself is a huge and vital part of your
senior year. What you do in that time is up to you. Some, for example, take an
hour or so before going to bed to just cruise on Facebook or watch TV. One
method that works very well, if you can stick to it, is to work during the week
and then take Sundays as your “day of rest.” Sleep in, guilt-free. Watch movies
or TV all day, read some books, go to center city and explore. The most
important thing to do in this personal time is to reflect.
Reflection is a huge part of your senior year, for better or
for worse. According to PyschCentral.com, activities like journaling “helping
you come to terms with [stressful events], thus reducing the impact of stressors
on your physical health.”
You can journal when and however you feel. This will help
you to sort of see what is on your own mind, and then return to it at a later
time when you can look at whatever you were feeling in that moment rationally. Another
method, and usually the best one for college students, is to look back at old
pictures. Facebook has enabled us to do so with incredible ease.
Reflection and nostalgia are absolutely wonderful and
destructive tools that we embody. They help us to remember where we came from,
and remind us where we might go in the future. There are different ways in
which to document one’s time here on earth. Some write. Some take pictures.
Some make bucket lists. But the best and most interesting make playlists.
The recent invention of the iPod and the even more recent
release of Spotify in the United States have made making a playlist not only a
convenience, but a truly beautiful way to document our experiences and now
share them with one another. Music has a way of documenting moments of our
lives. Songs remind us of lovers, of crushes, of family members, of birthday
parties, of the first day of school, or that special weekend last summer.
If you are the least bit nostalgic, or sad about graduating,
make a playlist with any and all of the following songs. Most will cheer you
up, others will depress you further.
“Good Life” by One Republic
“Good Riddance” by Greenday
“Unwritten” by Natasha Beddingfield
“Forever Young” by Rod Stewart
“I Hope You Dance” by Leann Womack
“Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”
by Baz Luhrmann
When you get to the end of your senior year, and you begin
to freak out because you don’t have a clue
where you will end up once you graduate, just put on your playlist and
remind yourself that you have the next 40 years to work. If you don’t work for
a year, will it really matter in the context of your life? If you don’t have
the highest GPA, or if you skip a class in order to go to a friend’s party or
art gallery showing, will it matter in the context of your life?
Absolutely not. What will
matter is that you look back on your senior year without regret. It will
matter that you took a risk, created a friendship, or fell in love only to get
your heart broken. It will matter that you stayed up until 3 in the morning
chatting with friends. It will matter that you kept in touch with your professors, and stuck with them long
enough so that they could give you advice about life and not just about class. What
will matter are the memories you created during what many call the best time of
your life.
