by Olivia Gleason '26 on October 30, 2025
Opinion
Hi Cowl readers! This week I’ve been reflecting a lot on how quickly it feels that time is passing—the age-old college senior existential crisis. This was brought on, I think, by Senior Ring Weekend (SRW) occurring this past weekend. Ever since I was a freshman, the event has been something I’ve looked forward to yet also dreaded at the same time, as in many ways, it marks the beginning of the end of my time at Providence College.
For the longest time, SRW felt light-years away, and in all honesty, it still did even at the start of this semester. Even though I was prepared in the material sense, having ordered my dresses and shoes weeks in advance, I had not processed the fact that my first milestone as a PC senior had arrived. When the realization finally hit me, I was hit with a sense of anxiety as I felt that my time to make meaningful memories at PC was slipping away.
All of this came into deeper perspective at the ring blessing mass on Sunday, when Father Jordan Zajac, O.P., gave a homily discussing memories and their meaning as time passes. What stood out to me most was when he explained that the process of time fading memories from one’s mind actually reveals what is most important, as the memories that remain are those that, whether it occurred to you or not in the moment you made them, are the ones that matter most. These memories that stick around are not always the ones you would think they would be, either—they aren’t always from days that you reached a milestone in your life, or found out some great news, or celebrated a big event with family or friends. More often than not, they are the in-between moments, those that felt utterly insignificant at the time. They come from the moments when you felt free and completely present.
I think that is what I’m slowly starting to accept as a senior, as I continue to approach milestone moments: you don’t need to pressure yourself to hold onto every moment or to make every event a monumentally memorable one, because the times that matter are the ones that will stay with you anyway. This takes the pressure off moments like SRW, when you might be feeling the incessant need to capture every moment and make the most of it, because in reality, all you have to do is be present. This is something I’m going to have to continue grappling with throughout my senior year and beyond, but it’s helping me to recognize that there is beauty to be found in the passing of time and the fading of memories. We don’t get to decide what we remember most, but what we do remember are moments that reveal something meaningful about ourselves, our surroundings, and the people we have shared our lives with.