You might not know it but they are the best years of your life! I was recently asked by one of my students to write an editorial about how seniors should tackle the final semester of their university career. Knowing that I might be able to provide some insight, being a former student myself who truly enjoyed every semester of university life, I agreed. It’s been nine years since I graduated from university and although I’ve seen and done some amazing things in my life, I still often reminisce about my days as a student (feels like yesterday). Seniors in the second semester should spend their remaining time socializing, dating, and consuming instead of being focused solely on attending the trivial classes that they enrolled in just so they could graduate.

      Senior year is no longer about an education it’s about experiencing and more importantly growing up. If you’re still scrambling to finish your chosen degree come second semester of senior year, you’re either greatly over- or under- achieving, and thus, nothing that I say here is going to matter. This advice is for the middle ground students: the ones who finished their moderately-difficult degree last semester and now simply must take whatever classes they imagine will allow them to nap the longest in. Should you take simple/effortless classes? I’m inclined to say no! Face it: you’re going to have to attend class most of the time, so why not choose challenging classes that are also interesting. Take that ancient cultures or music theory class. You can still have all the fun you want after class and on the weekends. On those occasions that you’re actually forced into attending class, like an exam! You’ll at least maybe pick up some interesting crumbs of intelligence, even if it is just a single idea/concept in one of the test questions that you don’t know the answer to because you skipped class (sleeping, shopping, etc...) the day that information was covered.

     Shortly before graduating young professionals tend to worry about change, but almost nothing changes after your
senior year. You will begin to understand that the difference between senior year and life after school is not about how much you’ve changed but how life judges you. Everything is simply amplified, and you will have the same kinds of responsibilities; you just have to be slightly more responsible about them. You spend more money, but you make more money. If you were the type that borrowed from your parents in school, you will borrow after school. If you were the self-sufficient type in school, you will be self sufficient after school. The point of all this, is that you should enjoy the very little time that you have left as a university student and by enjoying I mean having fun! After college, life changes and it becomes more about choices, commitment, and sharing.

     Seniors stop focusing all your energy on your classes and assignments, and experience something real.

Work hard early on in your college career, accomplish as much as you can so that you can enjoy college later on before it’s too late. Choose your classes according to your interest level as opposed to how not difficult they are. Teach yourself to be responsible and self reliant, you’ll be better off! To succeed you’re going to need all the practice you can get, so why not start during your senior year. Once you graduate the practice ends and the game begins..