senior anxiety

today, in history of motion picture, i was putting assignment due dates into my calendar instead of paying attention, and then  i t   h i t   m e . . . it finally hit me. i'm graduating college this semester. 

i counted about 4 weeks until spring break and 6 weeks after spring break. and then i started hyperventilating. in class. luckily the guy next to me was sleeping, so he didn't notice. but while homeboy was dreaming, i was wondering, "only 10 weeks?! where did all the other weeks go? am i really almost a college graduate?" i remember the days when twenty-something college grads seemed so old. but how can i be old if i still feel like i'm 5? and i'm supposed to be a grown up when i get my diploma? this doesn't compute with me.

maybe rushing to graduate wasn't such a good idea... part of me is itching for the freedom to fly far far away, but part of me wonders if i spent too much of my college years consumed in dreams of what would come instead of fully appreciating what i had in the moment. 

because sometimes i have moments like these...

when i'm standing on Landis and the air is just right and a gust of happiness compels me to think...
this place isn't so bad right now. maybe i really like college today. maybe i'll miss it when it's over.
or maybe i just thought those things because i have no idea what comes next.
this absolute freedom i've longed for is starting to look a lot like a cliff that i'm not sure what's at the bottom of. i don't have any after-college plans set in stone, and while i would normally mark that as ideal and liberating, it's starting to terrify me.
but regardless of my anxiety over the unknown, i resolve that i will be happy when the day comes that i won't have to spend my daylight hours in a room with a projection screen and no windows, and my nights in a smokey sports bar for dirty, crumpled cash.
the world is so much bigger than this.