Managing the End-Of-Year Balancing Act
By Madeline Wujek
“It’s just this bad for the next two weeks, but then I’m home free!” I hear that sentence at least once a day and affirm some iteration of that saying at least twice a day. As the days are getting longer and warmer and the year is wrapping up, the work seems to pile up higher than it has all semester. For many, the end of the spring semester is expected to be one big free-for-all when all the responsibilities of the year are finally coming to a close. Seniors, in particular, enjoy this is the last chance to be with the people we’ve surrounded ourselves with for the past four years to make our last batch of memories in the place we chose to call home.
As wonderful as that all sounds, it’s entirely idealized. There is no version of events where the life of a second-semester senior is a breeze, even if you’re one of the lucky ones with no schoolwork. There’s still packing to do, jobs to interview for, post-grad apartments to find, and a seemingly endless lineup of school sponsored graduation events. If you’re anything like me, this is incredibly overwhelming and can make the smallest of tasks seem daunting (I have yet to order tickets for some of these events simply because opening the link makes my head spin).
The only way around this is to prioritize. There is a fine line to balance between devoting time to the remaining work you may have and letting it all go to spend time with your friends— going to trivia night, for example, may not be the best idea if your hardest class has an 8:30 am final exam the next morning worth 40% of your grade. However, spending 10 hours on a project worth 5% of your grade on a sunny Saturday may not be totally necessary (let’s be honest, you can finish it in 2). Sit down, assess all of your upcoming deadlines, and assign value to each task. It's ultimately up to you to decide what deserves your time and attention. Transcripts are permanent, but for seniors especially, these are the last few weeks of time we will never get back; it’s all about balance.
This begs the question: what do I NEED to do in the next 3 weeks before I leave Villanova, Pennsylvania, potentially forever? I use the personal pronoun here because what I need to do may not be what you need, or what your roommate needs, or what your best friend needs. College means something different to everyone, and we’ve all had vastly different experiences during the past 4 years. The next 3 weeks are a matter of checking as many boxes as we can or need before walking across a stage in front of our peers, hugging our parents, and taping up that last cardboard box.
I need to go to CampCo one more time, if not a few more. I need to go to Hope’s with my friends after Sunday chapter, and I need to sit on a picnic blanket outside the church to watch the sunset even though it’s still a little too chilly for that. I need to clean out my closet, cook with the odd assortment of remaining ingredients in my fridge, and figure out how to get my decorations off the wall without ripping the paint (I probably will not be super successful at that). I need to once and for all learn how to use Excel graphs so I can finish my senior thesis. I need to give a lot of hugs, say a lot of “I love you”s, and take a lot of pictures because my memory isn’t as great as I’d like it to be and I haven’t spent as much time actively paying attention to everything around me as I should have.
The end of this semester is, as reported by every single one of my peers, one of the most chaotic they’ve experienced at Villanova. As great as it would be to change that, time will pass regardless, so figure out how you need to spend your time over these next few weeks. Turn in that final paper, take your exams, and then spend the rest of your day sitting on the steps of the Oreo or heading to one last happy hour with your friends- it’ll be time well spent either way!
