I have always been someone who exists in a state of limbo, keeping one foot firmly planted in the future, while still looking over my shoulder sentimentally at the things that are left behind as a result.
As the last few weeks of my senior year of college wind down, I find myself in a similar situation to four years ago as a senior in high school, though this time things feel more finite. My peers and I experienced the impact of COVID-19 in our last months of high school, where in place of the celebrations and camaraderie that typically comes with finishing high school, we were met with online classes and drive through graduations. As a result, things felt like they blurred into another online first-semester of college, still living at home.
Now, staring down graduation in less than two weeks, I struggle with the climactic feeling of a more abrupt ending to these four years than those of my high school career. Instead of having everything taken away unexpectedly and uncontrollably, this time around I am painfully aware of every “last” experience, every moment that I have taken for granted during my time at OU.
Last exams, last date parties getting dressed up to stand in a hot bar basement, last drive back to town after visiting home. Last nights sitting on the porch until 2 a.m., spending more time laughing with your friends than working on the assignment you put off. Last stressful days of studying in the library, last time digging through your roommate’s closet for something to wear last-minute.
Truthfully, it wasn’t all fun and games, as any college student will likely tell you. Entangled in the positive memories are the traces of heartbreak, pain, trials and failures, the feeling of loss of people you no longer speak to and those who are no longer with you. At the time, none of these moments felt romantic or even tolerable, but the beauty of hindsight is the ability to see how far you have come in just four short years.
After first coming to OU, I quickly realized it was not the type of environment I was used to or typically thrive in. Coming from a larger city, I felt bored and confined in a small college down, even though I loved my program and the experiences I was getting professionally. Despite this, I still hold a deep sentimentality over the unexpected experience I had here.
College was, for me, as with for other people, a time of many highs and lows, mistakes and opportunities. It’s easier to say in hindsight, but one of my greatest takeaways from the last four years is I wouldn’t change a thing. Every experience, positive or otherwise, taught me something about myself and made me appreciate the beauty in each phase of life.
I know it is my time to leave this chapter, and I crave the excitement and opportunity of the future, but I still mourn the unique time of college that I will never experience again. Over time I have come to realize that part of the beauty in our experiences is their mutual ephemerality and permanence.
Though my life may change a dozen times over, I will always carry the creases near my eyes from nights of laughter. I will drink Rumplemintz because of the girl who became one of my best friends at the sports bar where I spent my senior year working. I’ll have a purple scar on my thigh from hitting a curb while sledding down Jeff Hill on the first snowy night of sophomore year. I’ll speak with the verbal quirks I picked up from my roommate, and I’ll listen to Metro Boomin because the guy I dated introduced me to him.
Everyone I have met and everything that has passed will never truly leave me and have made me the 21-year-old almost graduate, ready to take another step forward while having her head cocked towards the people and places who she’ll carry with her forever.
“The View Between Villages,” a song by one of my favorite artists, Noah Kahan, has always been a song I return to which encompasses the feeling of being torn between two places that signify your past and your present. For a long time, this resonated with my feelings of attachment to home and family while pursuing a life that took me farther away. Now, as I leave another place, I am, in Kahan’s words, “splitting the road down the middle” between the memories of my life until this point and the journey standing ahead of me.
It’s important to live in the present and it’s important to look forward to the dreams you hope to achieve. But what I’ve also come to realize is, it is OK to value the past and all of its fluctuations, without living in it.
Thank you OU and everyone here for your lasting imprint on who I will be for the rest of my life.
Sophie Young is a senior studying journalism. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk more about it? Let Sophie know by tweeting her @sophielisey
