The Observer, March 31, 2006
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 22
Easy senior year is a myth
It's currently a stressful time to be me. Not only am I still not entirely sure where I'm going next year, but I currently have less than a week to decide whether or not I should join the military. Add in a twice-weekly 8:30 a.m. lab and 17 hours of work a week, and you have something that's starting to approximate my life. I probably shouldn't be complaining because everyone who's taking the MCAT is kicking it into the final stretch, but at the same time, I feel I was promised a slightly different second-semester-senior experience. For the past few years upperclassmen have been regaling me with tales of going out to bars and seeing movies on weeknights because they just didn't have any work to do. Leads me to wonder: what the heck am I doing wrong here? At present, not only am I staring down a take-home midterm, another exam, a research paper, a Spanish composition, and a set of calculations, I also have a poster for SOURCE to pull together, all in the upcoming month.
To be honest, I don't think I really know anyone who's relaxing and enjoying the last two months before graduation. Most of my friends are either working on senior projects or capstone projects, trapped in endless labs, or panicking about what the future holds. Instead of being a relaxing time filled with margaritas, bikinis, beaches, and the like, second semester senior year is a chance to draw on everything learned in the first three and a half years of undergrad. A whole slew of people I know are taking graduate-level classes, and while I've never taken one, word on the street is that not only are undergrads not given any slack, but the researching and papering and homeworking never ends. And, as if classes weren't enough, there are preparations for next year to worry about. The people I know who are lucky enough to have a definite plan now have to worry about moving across the country, becoming certified, negotiating salaries, worrying about dental benefits, and everything else not included in the Case bubble. The 3 a.m. nights and 6 a.m. mornings are in roughly the same abundance as before this year – I was up until two last night filling out my commissioning forms. Sleep deprivation, stress, excessive work…it's not letting up anytime soon. My visions of having time to relax and finish enjoying all that Cleveland has to offer have, as usual, exploded in a sea of papers and calendars. To put it in a nutshell, this semester is really no different from the usual stress-filled spring semester, except that people are constantly asking me to elaborate on my rather nebulous plan for the rest of my life.
I'm hoping that by senior week not only will I have passed my classes and completed the necessary requirements to earn my degree, but I'll also know definitively what I'm doing next year. And maybe, just maybe, life will have slowed down enough by then to let me get my hundred dollars worth of activities.
