by Emily Baldo '24 on November 12, 2023
Editor-in-Chief
Editor's Column
The fall semester has only just begun, and yet there have been events for the senior class to take advantage of our last months together in one place. Within the first week, there was Senior Sunset. Now, on Friday Sept. 22, the day after this issue reaches the stands, we celebrate 224 nights until graduation.
Counting down to something like that is a strange feeling; it’s not like watching the days tick down to a vacation or to Christmas. It’s like watching the hourglass run out faster and faster on the time you have with your friends, to do homework, join clubs, and do the things that have defined our lives for the past twenty-some years. It’s a strange feeling, not because yet another era of our lives is coming to an end, but because it’s a much more shocking change than any we have experienced so far. I can’t speak for the rest of the class of 2024, but I will say that as we prepare to join the alumni at the end of this year, the desire to take advantage of everything Friartown has to offer is overwhelming, and so is the cycle of thoughts that plays over and over in my mind.
What if I didn’t join enough clubs? Meet enough people? Go to all of the events I should have? Worse still, what if I didn’t network enough, or my resume doesn’t hold up against the rest of the graduating seniors everywhere who want the same job I do, and I’m left scrambling to pick up the pieces? There’s a lot of “what ifs?” wrapped up in endings, and this one is no exception.
Yet it speaks volumes that it’s only the second Cowl of the year, and I can’t get graduation and the future out of my head. The combination of knowing, logically, that it will work out with the emotional distress of such a huge change and the anxiety that accompanies it is exhausting. What does it say that many of us can’t even rest without being plagued by the future already?
With 224 nights until graduation comes nostalgia for freshman year, when I didn’t believe how fast the time would actually go. I hope it brings a sense of community between myself and the incredible people I have met here. I hope it brings a sense of peace that we have taken advantage of our time here, and a confidence that we will take advantage of the time that we have left to soak it all in. So, seniors, as the countdown begins: let’s make the most of it.