The Last Hurrah

I broke a stress ball yesterday.

Thanksgiving break has rolled around and I feel more lost than I was when the semester began. Frankly, I've never had all aspects of my life reaching their full potential at the same time. Right now my social life is pretty A+, school is going great but professionally, I'm slacking. There's a sold chance I'll drop dead if I have to draft another cover letter.

I feel conflicted most of the time about whether I'm too old or too young for things. Full disclaimer: I realize 20 isn't old. For the point I'm at in my life, I feel like I should be much older. Graduation is coming a year sooner than it's supposed to, and I'm not really ready to say goodbye to college just yet. Honestly, that's why I started applying to grad schools; I'm just struggling to let go. Three years ago, when my dad dropped me off at the airport, he told me that he had a feeling college was going to be the four best years of my life. It's been two and a half years now, and even though there have been ups and downs and lots of in-between phases, it's been the adventure I've always wanted.

It's easy to look back with regrets: I should've studied abroad, or taken more business classes and maybe dropped that political science major to a minor, but at the end of the day I'm happy with how things worked out. My mom always told me that the secret to success is finding a team of like-minded individuals, and I think I did that. Through incredible teacher and learning opportunities, the friendships I found in my sorority and just the experience of being a college student in Washington, D.C., there's nothing I would change if I could go back and do it all again.

Sometimes I think back to who I was three years ago. It seems like a lifetime has passed since then. The person I am today is exactly who I've always wanted to be, but I think on some level, I'm still worried that that's not enough. Maybe that's a good thing. The tattoo on my ribs translates to "Do more, be more," and so maybe I just need to remember that fire I have inside me and use it to push myself in this final lap.

"The last hurrah," is what I keep calling this year, but that's ignoring that I have a lifetime of adventures ahead of me. A year from now I could be living anywhere, doing anything and looking back on my senior year in college as just another stepping stone. I'm not really sure where I'll be five years from now. This is just the beginning of something incredible, and I'm not going to risk closing my eyes and missing a second of it.

I know at the end of the day, everything will work out, but I have a feeling there's going to be a couple more broken stress balls before that happens.