Senior year.
For years I've been looking forward to this. Finally 21. Living in a house. Done with lame 100-level classes. The thought of it is great, but from the second I walked back on to campus a month and a half ago, the idea of being the oldest here - excluding some questionable fifth years - makes me physically ill.
Being a senior sucks. You're supposed to be mature and focused by now. I couldn't be more disheveled.
I find myself constantly panicking every time I'm forced to field questions about my impending future.
No, I don't know what I want to do with my life! No, I'm not sure how I will support myself! No, I don't know how my major will get me a job of any sorts!
Looking back on the past three years I've come to determine that majors are a joke … any major besides a business major that is.
As first-years, Miami University's multiple academic departments fill our young malleable minds with hope and promise. They convince us that anthropology and sports management are perfectly acceptable majors. And they somehow refrain from planting even one tiny seed of doubt in our naive little heads that everything may not pan out as we anticipate.
Then senior year hits. You're sitting in your painful communication theory class, learning the difference between linear and transactional models of communication for the fourth time and suddenly the reality of your situation begins to set in.
What the hell am I doing with my life?
No one cares if the feedback in my conversation is interrupted by physiological or psychological noise. They also won't care that I would categorize myself as being between the third and fourth step of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, that the unknown quadrant of my Johari Window is the biggest, or that once, when I was a first-year in Geology of U.S. National Parks, I could actually tell you the difference between a stalactite and a stalagmite.
Yep, I'm f**ked.
For three years I thought I was better than the unoriginal, dare I say mundane, carbon copy business majors. I was creative. I was different. And, I sure as hell wasn't going to spend the rest of my life in a cubicle where the most important item on my day's agenda was deciding whether to go to Panera or Chipoltle for lunch. I refused to let myself turn into an office dweller who lives solely for biannual company outings, long lunches and three-day weekends. I couldn't imagine selling my soul to the accounting world at age 18. But I'm beginning to think I may have gotten it all wrong.
Here I am, a journalism and speech communication double major with zero job prospects in a dying field. My finance major friend just got her first job offer, which of course, includes an absurd starting salary and paid vacation time. Meanwhile I'm over here hoping that Applebee's offers health plans to its full-time employees. Maybe, just maybe, the business majors were the smart ones - it pains me just thinking that. They committed to the inevitable grind early while the rest of us still let our hopes and dreams lead us to pursue careers in writing, medicine and politics … just silly.
It's this depressing thought constantly lingering over me that's now forcing me to pump the brakes here at school and try to slow everything down. I drag out assignments, procrastinate on absolutely everything and go out more than ever before. So far it's been an excellent and enjoyable coping mechanism but I'm not yet sure how long it can last. But for the time being I'll milk it for all it's worth. Because even though I know those business school twats will make more money than me, live in a better house, in a cooler city, with a nicer car, their lives will inevitably suck. So for now they can keep their hyped-up resumes, career fairs and on-campus interviews - I refuse to conform just yet. I'll hold to my procrastinating ways for just a bit longer … maybe those questionable fifth years are the smartest ones of us all.
