There is a distinct, unwritten ritual to the first day of classes. You wake up five minutes before your alarm, agonizing over an outfit that says “effortlessly put together” rather than “I just finished track and field lift five minutes ago.” You wait in an absurdly long line for an iced coffee that costs more than a textbook chapter, and you sit in a lecture hall listening to a syllabus review you could have easily read on Canvas.
For three years, this day felt like a predictable reset button. A clean slate. A fresh notebook with untouched margins. This year, though, the reset button had an asterisk. Walking across campus this week, I was hit by an unfamiliar, slightly jarring realization. This was my last first day of classes. Suddenly, the most mundane campus routines carried an unearned emotional weight. When I begrudgingly walked up the 9th Street hill with my roommate, a small voice in the back of my mind whispered, “Take it in, this is your last first week walk to school.” When I climbed the steps up to the main entrance of the athletics building, I didn’t just curse the lack of swipe access to the weightroom door; I found myself thinking, someday, you’ll miss this building.
Everyone warned us about senioritis. We’ve spent years hearing about the legendary fourth year slump — a mythical condition where your motivation dissolves, deadlines become mere suggestions, and your attendance record resembles a game of hide and seek. But entering senior year has revealed a version of senioritis nobody really prepares you for. It’s not just laziness. It’s the strange tension between wanting to check out and desperately wanting to freeze time. Right now, senioritis feels like standing on the edge of a cliff. On one hand, the temptation to mentally check out from the exhaustion of three years of midterms, lab reports, group projects, and late night cram sessions and coast to graduation is practically magnetic. On the other hand, the realization that our collegiate timer is running out makes every ordinary Tuesday feel weirdly sacred.
You find yourself lingering five minutes longer on the lawn or outside the library just talking to friends. You tolerate the UCC rush hour with a little more patience. You catch yourself actually paying attention during the campus resources portion of the syllabus, wondering how four years vanished into thin air. Every “first” this semester is secretly a final countdown. The last first track meet, the last first club meeting, the last time you’ll ever buy a notebook for an undergraduate syllabus. It’s an odd headspace to occupy. How do you push forward to finish the marathon while simultaneously trying to slow your stride so it doesn’t end?
If you’re a senior feeling this peculiar brand of whiplash, my advice, and my personal goal for this column is simple: Lean into both. Let yourself feel tired of the grind, you’ve earned the right to roll your eyes at an eight-page paper prompt. But don’t let the fatigue blind you to the everyday magic of this place. The finish line will arrive whether we’re ready or not. So, here’s to the syllabus weeks, the packed campus sidewalks, and the quiet realization that the best way to handle the beginning of the end is just to show up, even if we’re already running on senior time.
