After going abroad last semester, and as the end of this one fast approaches, I feel like I have been a junior for about five-and-a-half minutes. I am registered for my senior fall courses already and attempting to close in on my final internship of my college career. People definitely warned me as I entered college that these years would fly by but at 18, four years still seemed like an eternity. But, alas, here I am a second semester junior. College has been fun, hard, rewarding and draining. But am I ready to graduate?

I have always been someone who loves school. Summer was fun, but by August I was unbelievably bored and ready to head back to the classroom. I loved the routine of school, learning new things and, most importantly, reading.

My childhood mentality towards school also carried over into my dream of going to college. In elementary school computer class, we all had our individual username and pass- word to login to the prehistoric, clunky Apple desktops. Everyone’s username was their first initial, last name and then the year we would graduate high school. 2016. That felt eons away but I knew one day it would come and I would go to college. In fourth grade, after seeing the movie “College Road Trip” with Raven Symoné, I followed my dad with a notepad as he walked our dog asking him the names of good colleges. I quickly jotted them down to remember to look them up later on the family computer.

When it was finally time to look at colleges, we took a college road trip of our own all over the Northeast. In the end, I applied to an absurd number of schools. The college admissions process seemed much smoother in the movies, but I made it out the other end and chose Colgate.

College has been both everything I dreamed of when I was little and simultaneously nothing like it. Choosing classes and dreaming of all the interesting debates we’ll have there matches up. Some classes, though, have also been as disappointing or aggravating as some high school ones were. I have made friends from all over the country and will cherish the memories we’ve made forever. But the library isn’t quite the old, graceful and ornate hall of learning I thought it would be.

As my final year at Colgate comes into focus, I am met with conflicted feelings about whether I am ready to leave or not. I do not want to take my college years for granted. When else in my life will all my friends and I live five minutes from each other with nothing to do but go to the library or hang out with each other? When else will I be able to explore any new interest I have by simply choosing it as a fourth class? As the “real world” creeps closer to being a reality, I begin to worry about how much time I have left here.

But at the same token, I am itching every day to dive into the real world. I love political campaigns and I know politics is exactly what I want to do with my life. This summer I am pursuing political communications internships outside of the campaign world because I think it might break my heart again if I have to leave another campaign for a whole year while at school. There is just so much to do and it hurts to know that I can’t just start right now.

In the end, I am thankful for what I have learned at Colgate both in and out of the classroom. It is strange to think I won’t be a student in a year. Still, I am so ready for what’s next. Besides, there’s always grad school.

Contact Glynnis Harvey at [email protected].