Q: I’m a senior graduating in like 20 days and I’m terrified that I peaked in college.
A: Congratulations, graduates. You’ve just entered your journey to a thrilling new life consisting of filing taxes, sitting on hold with the insurance company and knowing what the term ‘mortgage’ means.
First of all, we seriously doubt this is true, considering your frontal lobe hasn’t even fully developed yet. But if you define ‘peak’ as attending 101 après ski parties between the months of January and April, then sure, maybe you did. However, we certainly do not and are here to tell you why.
What we really think you’re going to miss is the ease of it all. The fact that your best friends were only a hill away and there was always something happening, even if that was just sitting on Prez Lawn watching hundreds of tour groups go by. Right now, you’re in a vacuum where your only real job is to eat, sleep, go out, study (sometimes) and repeat.
It’s good that you think of college as a high, because that means nostalgia has taken over and you’re remembering just the good stuff. In reality, I’m sure the last four years have consisted of avoiding laundry until you were down to your last pair of underwear, waiting 106 minutes for a Hodge sandwich and getting repeatedly burned by the sheer amount of nonchalant men on this campus. But right now, none of that matters. Celebrate your achievement. At the very least, you made it to graduation.
The best moments of your day will probably look a little different moving forward, but you did not spend four years of your life crying over sociology papers and sleeping on a twin XL bed just to cap out at 22. The reality is that college isn’t a peak, it’s just a very loud, very crowded phase of life — kinda like the DTD basement on Halloweekend. If the next one is quieter, it doesn’t make it any less important. And the good news is that your future ‘peaks’ don’t require you to share a bathroom with 75 of your closest friends, so the bar is actually getting higher.
If all else fails, remember nothing says ‘I peaked in college’ like moving into your parents basement and telling anyone that will listen about your intramural dodgeball game. The world is bigger than senior spring, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.
The truth is college didn’t make your life good, you did. And the friendships, life lessons, LinkedIn achievements and fun memories — that all goes with you.
Now go do literally anything else.
Good luck,
Sharper Advice
