Editorial: The best years of your life; so far

I’m seven months away from graduation and even though that seems like a long time, I’m already starting to feel anxious, nervous, excited, and curious — basically what everyone feels when they are about to go through a major change in their life. 

The one cliché that I have constantly heard during my four years so far at Laurier has been “these are going to be the best years of your life.”

Although that cliché sounded great to me in my first, second and third years, it’s now starting to scare me.

If these are the four best years of my life, then every year from here on out is going to be worse.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m starting to put too much emphasis on everything just because it is my last year at university. 

For example, Halloween just passed, and since it was our ‘last Halloween’, my roommates and I tried too hard to make it memorable. 

And this can be applied to so many other situations. I’ve already been through my last Homecoming, my last fall reading week, and eventually I’ll go through my last St. Patrick’s Day and even my last exams.

By putting so much pressure on all these events, I’m essentially making sure that they’re never going to live up to the hype. 

It’s easy to get caught in this trap, and I’m sure there are lots of other students in their last year doing this too; but I’ve realized that it’s important for me to treat these big occasions like I would any other year. 

The biggest reason behind people saying that your university years are the best years is the extreme focus on the positive aspects.

I always hear ‘this is the last time you’ll be around so many people your age,’ and ‘once you finish university and step into the real world.’  

While I don’t necessarily disagree with either of those things, I can point out plenty of negative aspects as well that make university sounds much worse than it actually is.

I don’t like the constant back-and-forth moving that I have to do every year from my home to my student house.  

I’m tired of studying for exams for elective courses that I don’t care about, the constant stress of applying for jobs is exhausting, and worrying about food every day is the worst. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you can make any experience sounds amazing or terrible based on what you focus on, and that definitely applies to your university years and beyond. 

So I’ve decided to make a slight change to the aforementioned cliché and turn it into: “these are going to be the best years of your life, so far.”

It’s important to make that distinction because if these are the best four years of my life, then I’ve failed. 

I need to make sure that the next four years of my life are the best

four years of my life.