The end is near...

"Anxieties of a Senior"

By Pamela Gutierrez

He looked out, legs outstretched and deep in thought. My roommate, Ian, looked especially flustered after a game of his mother’s new favorite pastime—Let´s Guess Ian’s Future. She might be more fearful of playing if she could only see what Skype so conveniently hid. "This is disgusting," said Ian from his personal pool of candy wrappers. Moving his feet from their strategic place between the hamster cage and ashtray, he was careful not to push any of the six or so glasses, the sole survivors of our dwindling collection, off the battered coffee table.

Some things can be avoided. You learn to dodge the beer spills and avoid the broken end of the couch but the ash is inescapable and the mess is practically chronic.

“Our parents would kill us if they knew we lived this way.” A declaration my roommates and I frequently make when our living room is looking especially dismal. Even worse is, “We have to clean this up before my parents come visit.”

My life mapped out on Hello Kitty stationary, I was sure of everything. Step one: Go to College. This was easy enough, I had been prepped and primed for this my entire life, and it seemed only natural when the time came. Step 2: Graduate Top of My Class With a Bazillion Internships Under My Belt and My Dream Job Lined Up. This is still a work in progress but the forecast is less than sunny.

For us, and many new seniors, it’s all about maintaining the image. The fearless, all-knowing, all-accomplishing image we created for ourselves when we were too young to know better. The image parents, former teachers, and friends back home now come to expect every Christmas and summer vacation. The one that we can barely make out among the pessimism, bad news, and reality checks that gradually transform us from those naïve but hopeful little selves.

A parent visiting is always the trigger. We quickly snap back into the fairy tale we promised ourselves and them. On the dean’s list, president of the student body, and the only student ever allowed to teach astrophysics. Yes, we were supposed to be perfect little college students, hold the grime. For now, and for the next 200 or so days until we officially graduate from college, we can still snap back, feigning the confidence of our younger, pre-“enlightened” days.

But at the precipice of the real world, I feel as if I’ve been hit by a bus. My injuries include the sudden realization that, no, things won’t just figure themselves out. My time as a sheltered student where inaction means little more than a C average is quickly ending.

I’d always assumed the life I dreamed of would just happen, much like the need for a training bra or the weird “About Your Body” book by mother insisted I read.

I just knew my career as a famous and respected journalist would come. I would write out of my San Francisco Victorian home from ten to three, then have lunch with my equally fabulous friends. Later I would go home, write a bit more, and have dinner with my loving, brilliant, six-pack wielding husband. Wonderfully behaved children would follow and I would be sublimely and unconditionally happy and secure.

Of course I would have these things. If puberty came, why not success?

But then, just when things might actually start happening, nothing happens. I’d spent the last three years perfecting my FAFSA only to be told that real grown-ups worry about their 401K and that no one cares that I’m trained in iambic pentameter. If Matt Denson, graduating senior and bona fide sonnet connoisseur is having trouble finding a job, I can only imagine my own fate in a year’s time. Unlike failing to get the lead in the school play where my free time is more of a blessing than a curse, not finding a job means living with my parents—a true curse for anyone once having lived in Madrid. But how exactly does one find their dream career when their idea of job hunting is circling the mall?

My Victorian house has a two million dollar price tag and I can barely tear myself away from Facebook long enough to finish my homework, much less write my award-winning novel.

My days as a student are numbered. No more checking Facebook in class or idly practicing my name in cursive instead of paying attention. No more sliding by. If I’m mediocre now, people will start to notice.

So here I am. Twenty-one years old and suddenly having to walk the walk I’ve talked about for years. I live these final months in a mixture of anxious anticipation and nausea, a feeling I’ve grown to find strangely comforting. My apartment, which I stumble out of each day after sufficient snoozing and some degree of procrastination, is anything but what my parents envision from their California home across the world. Sure, my description of four rooms, two bathrooms, and a “nice” kitchen doesn’t quite capture the grunge of the situation but I’ve learned that assessing its condition as an absolute failure would be inaccurate also.

We always pay the rent eventually and usually have electricity, but more importantly we’ve turned an empty apartment in a foreign city into an environment that feels more like home than my parent’s house ever really could. In trading in the safety and security of our childhood homes and lifestyles for an “interesting” flat in Madrid, we also gained the freedom to become something more than just residents of someone else’s home. If the plastic sword mounted in the hall is any indication, we’ve transitioned from simple sons and daughters to individuals with thinking and knowledge as diverse as our decorating senses. 

Graduating from college, much like leaving the nest, will doubtless be a little sticky and uncomfortable, but the exchange could bring possibilities far beyond the reach of even the most thrilling textbook. More than just the freedom to hang ridiculously tacky posters in the living room, this time we’re earning the right to break a lifelong routine and actually be the men and women that we’d always dreamed of becoming. So bring on the anxiety, bring on those 400-level classes, and bring on the future… Just don’t forget the barf bag.