First Day of School

Today was the first day of school. Of senior year of college.

And I didn’t go.

Taking a semester off of school is a really strange thing. I spent the day scrolling through Facebook and Instagram looking at photos of my friends all going off to class, starting their senior year and all looking darling in their sorority recruitment shirts, which of course happen to be pink the year I’m not there. 

A part of me wishes to be there with all of them, moved into my apartment with my girlfriends, jogging around the gorgeous main quad and using the hashtag #lastsipofchampaign all over my Instagram. Let’s be real, it’s a great hashtag and my friends are brilliant. 

Anyways, there’s a fear that comes with not returning to school. Fear of missing out, of course, but also a fear of not being missed at all. A fear of becoming irrelevant. By the time I return to campus I will have been gone an entire full year, and considering college is only four years, that’s a long time. That time feels even longer because by the time I will have returned, I will be a completely different person. The globe-trotting, 250-mile-walking, camel-riding, mind-blowing-internship-getting woman that I have grown into. 

Yet, all of those fears and concerns are immediately drowned out because my life is moving in the exact direction that I want it to. I have my dream internship, and I feel a satisfaction with my life that I never even thought possible. I have the privilege of working for the company that countless people dream of working for. I get to fly to New York for training, live in my new gorgeous bachelorette pad and explore Ann Arbor for three months. I honestly can’t ask for anything more than what I already have in my life.

Yet, I am only human, and the human part of me wanted a first day of senior year. That’s all. Just the day. Okay, and maybe an Instagram post. But hey, I’ll get that when I return to school in January. Cheers to all my ladies down at U of I, here’s a toast to your last sip of Champaign! 

In the meantime, I still get to enjoy a little bit of summer vacation before my next great adventure begins!