I found out last Sunday that I have 30 credits/9 required classes and 1 elective left before I graduate. I'm a sophomore, so having an academic year between me and my future is unusual. I had been planning and preparing to study abroad in a Grove City house campus in France. But the classes offered over there weren't the specific ones I need. I was thinking about going anyway, then taking spring and fall semesters and graduating in December of my senior year.
So after a few days of really hard deliberation, I decided to give up France and graduate a whole year early, which opened up a whole year here on campus, so I decided to apply for RA again (22 hours before the app was due). I got no sleep all week.
Sure, the decision was hard. It was hard because I had been holding on so tightly to my own little plan of going to France junior year and RAing again senior year. Then I had both of those taken from me, and I had to trust that God would choose for me. I had no control at all. Slowly but surely, all the doors to France were softly closed [for now]. In 4 days, I went from being a sophomore to a junior, and I fast-forwarded through to my "third" year of college. Or if you look at it in another way, I will never have a senior year. Either way, it feels like just one more thing in my life that is making me grow up faster than I feel ready to.
I'll be graduating with my friends on staff who are juniors now, including my roommate. This time next year, I will be a few months away from graduating. And just like I had to let God take control and close those doors for me, I can only cling to the fact that he will prepare me to graduate and be an adult 7 months before I am of drinking age.
It's all pretty insane that I'm already thinking about getting an apartment or living abroad as an au pair or taxes...It's pretty insane for my boyfriend, who will be graduating a year later than me, not to mention all of my close friends who are sophomores. I've done my research and found out that alphabetically, I'll graduate before my much-older friends with last names that start with S or W. It's a lot to process.
I can genuinely tell you that this is where God is taking me, but I'm not going to lie to you and say that it's going to be easy at all. The post-grad world will be a lonely realm to navigate without other close friends going through it with me, and a year apart from Camden isn't going to be a walk in the park either. But I'm also kind of excited. I don't have any desire to hang around campus and take Asian Pottery and Interpretative German Dance for all of senior year. I'm pumped to save the year's worth of money for my brothers and mom to be able to go to college, too. It's just been a really tough decision and I'm going to be feeling the effects of it for the rest of my life, and so are the people that I love most. So needless to say I would really like a vacation right now.