Graduation? Panic.

When I checked my email this morning, I had a new email from graduation services. The email was sent to those of us poor lucky souls who are scheduled to graduate at the end of the semester. In the email, we were informed that this is the week we buy our cap and gown and that tickets to graduation will be available to download beginning this week. Then it hit me. I graduate in seven weeks. That is less than two months. 

Upon this startling reality check, courtesy of graduation services, I began to panic. See, I've never been the type of person to adapt to change very well. Even the littlest changes throw me into a whirlwind of stress and panic. Being in school is all I know how to do. It's all I've ever done since age five. Sure, I've had part time jobs here and there, but for the past eighteen years my primary identity has been student. I don't know who I'm going to be in the "real world." I still haven't even decided what career path I want to take. And I only have seven weeks to find out.

I spent the last five and a half years trying to just get through college, get it over with and graduate. Now that graduation is right in front of me, all I want to do is stay in school. You'd think I would've known better considering I had the same thought when I graduated high school. I completely took for granted the four years I spent in high school. All I wanted was to be out of school. Then college turned out to not at all be what I was expecting or hoping for and I'm sure I'll be saying the same thing about post-grad life. I missed out on so much trying to just get through school, without ever stopping to simply experience it. We waste our youth wishing we were older, waiting to grow up, thinking that's when life really happens. Then we do grow up and we realize we couldn't have been more wrong.