Thoughts on Senior Year: A Piece of Possibility
By Chloe Cherry
I came to campus with a gift for my last year. I’d been packaging it all summer. Ever since I watched an interview with Sonia Sanchez, the words reverberated in my mind: “It’s got to move into the bloodstream...We have to sing peace, we have to make peace a part of our hum.” I decided this summer that contrary to all the anxieties and fears about what life after graduation would look like, I would come to campus carrying peace with me.
On my flight back to campus, my peace was reified as I meandered through the skinny airplane walkway. I just so happened to sit next to a girl named Keyla. “Are you a college student?” she asked me in her light, sweet voice. I told her I went to Villanova, and her eyes grew wide. “I’m going to Haverford!” Instantly our conversation quickened. She was an incoming first-year traveling from Houston, Texas to attend Haverford College. This was her first ever plane ride, and she was moving into campus all by herself. We discussed her classes and the extracurriculars that piqued her interest, ranging from archery to the equestrian club. And as a senior approaching my last year of college, I was faced with an idea that I didn’t know I’d suppressed: possibility.
My friend, Sharon, picked me up from the airport that day, and I asked her if she would be willing to drop Keyla off to Haverford since it was close by. We drove her to Haverford in all her excitement and wonder, and watched her take in Philadelphia for the first time, absorbing the place that she would call her new home. As her excitement grew, my sense of peace and self-assuredness did too; at least, that's what I told myself. I clung to Keyla’s words: “I knew you were a college student because you looked like you knew what you were doing.” Her words confirmed a hope that my senior year would be completed with ease.
As soon as I reached my empty college dorm, however, my peace 一 the fortitude I affirmed I had as I drove into campus and passed the familiar buildings that hold all my bittersweet memories of my past three years 一 dried out, hardened and cracked to shattered glass. Suddenly, I was confronted with all of the things I had to do, and all the things I haven’t done. I kept trying to remember, to hold onto, and to comb through all the things I’ve filled my time with in the past. And I started to grieve all of my expectations for college, all the excitement I once had that I saw in Keyla’s eyes.
Even though we are all processing senior year differently, I know many of my fellow peers are wrestling, essentially, with time, nervous about their future and reflecting on their past. The purpose of this piece is to make a case for possibility as we forge through this last year of what’s supposed to be the “glory days.” Here are thoughts that have allowed me to make room, and believe in, possibility:
I am becoming. Senior year can easily feel like a plateau, and while it is the end of a moment and chapter in your life, it is also an open door to a new life that is full of possibility. I have no idea what my life will look like after college, and instead of perceiving that as a burden, I feel so excited about what's to come. I am becoming. It is okay for me to still be working through things. It is okay for me to not know because there is never, and I hope there never will be a time, where I will reach an end of my growth.
The only way for me to carry peace with me is to be at peace with myself. I didn’t catch it the first time I watched Sonia Sanchez’s video, but I rewatched her discussion on peace in an interview with the EnvisionPeaceMuseum on Youtube, and I felt a wound inside of me heal after hearing her say that the only way we can envision peace is to be at peace with ourselves. I say this to directly address the insecurities that arise for many of us during senior year. Insecurity makes it easy to compare yourself to everyone around you. But I realized that I can only survive as the person I want to be, if I make peace with who I am. For me, this means accepting rather than suppressing all parts of myself and allowing them to meld together, preventing a feeling of disorientation and disjointedness. I encourage whoever is reading this to allow themselves to uncover and feel what making peace with themselves might look like in spite of the unsettling nature of senior year. I hope that in doing so, we can forge excitement for our future no matter the circumstances and allow ourselves to truly enjoy this last year in undergrad.
