Is there a pause button for senior year?

By: Juliyana Straley

The never-ending workload of senior year is incredibly real, as many of you know. Along with 18 plus credit hours, we juggle clubs and teams, jobs, homework, a resemblance of a social life, occasional sleep, mindless eating, and best of all applying for jobs.

A year ago, I decided to graduate a semester early and was thrilled at the idea of moving from small town Findlay to starting a real life with a cool job with a golden retriever puppy (the most important part of the story). It sounds all fine and wonderful right? Seems doable? No.

The reality of it all is that life is expensive and full of an obscene amount of responsibilities. Sure, college is too, school isn’t all fun and games, but moving to a bigger city means you’ll pay 60% of your income on college alone (that’s a little dramatic put it paints a good picture for you). That “cool job” takes months to find, even longer. You’ll apply to hundreds of jobs, hear from 30, interview with 15, and get an offer from 3, it’s a truly magical process.

That dog, or cat (if you’re into that kind of animal), costs a lot of money upfront, will probably need some ridiculously special diet. It will have complications from some sort of surgery and will need a lot of vet visits and a lot of time for training which is super easy when working from 8-5, not including commute. Then there are utilities, food, furniture, and other bills that need to be paid.

It’s not all bad, but right now with graduation getting closer and closer, it’s a little intimidating.

My advice: enjoy the college bubble. Sure, you’re up until 3am doing homework but you’re doing it with friends. You may have 8ams but it’s better than going from 8am-5pm five days a week with no break.

My resume may say I’m ready for the real world but if I could, I would consider staying an extra semester. When you think about it, the college bubble really has extremely minimal responsibilities. Once you graduate, you can’t show up late, miss a class because you decided to sleep in, or forget to turn in an assignment anymore. You do that, and you’re fired and frantically searching for another job.

Enjoy every single second here on this beautiful campus because there’s no pause button and time really does fly.

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