College is Coming

Junior year was my favorite year when I was in high school, and then it quickly became my favorite year to interact with when I started working in a high school.

All of the ages have their pros and cons, quirks and charms, but for me, juniors have lost much of the awkwardness, uncertainty, and immaturity of the underclassmen – they know their way around, they know how things work, they know the little tricks to open stuck lockers and the best shortcuts – but they haven’t yet gotten a full-fledged case of the apathy that often plagues the seniors. 

Personally junior year was my favorite because I felt like I had my feet firmly on the ground but no one was asking me about college 8 million times a day quite yet. (Also, I’d fulfilled my PE requirement, so I didn’t have to run the mile and could instead take a course on Southern literature.)

Once I hit the fall of my senior year, multiple people wanted to know where I was going to college, and I’m not exaggerating when I said that almost every time someone asked me, I would answer politely that I was still exploring my options … and then I would go throw up.

I had never been away from my mom for more than a week. How on earth was I supposed to just … go off to college? Somehow, though, almost miraculously, by that spring, I knew that I was going to not just go away for college but actually go pretty far away to college. My friends who had spent summers abroad or gone to sleepaway camp for a decade before becoming a counselor and continuing to attend for months at a stretch? Most of those people ended up staying within a couple hours’ drive while I, who didn’t even want to attend the senior lock-in, somehow packed up and moved 12 hours away.

I don’t regret it. I think it was a great experience and I’m proud that I managed to make a fresh start, make new friends, learn to live on my own, and even drive in the snow! I think everyone should live somewhere different from where they grew up if possible. It broadens your perspectives and changes your worldview.

But now that I have my own high school junior, I’m sort of wondering how I’m supposed to just … let her go off to college?

Is that really how this all works? You grow a human in your body (or otherwise welcome them into your home) and you raise them for 18 years and you memorize their pediatricians’ phone numbers and wash their hair and halve their grapes and register them for school and drive them to a billion rehearsals and practices and console them when they don’t make Student Council and sleep by their bed when they’re sick and keep straight the foods they love and the foods they hate and wash their PE uniforms and fill their water bottles and teach them to ride a bike and teach them to drive and then they’re just … gone? 

I guess it is. And I guess I should be following my own advice and enjoying junior year because it is the best year because you don’t have to even start stressing about college yet and can just enjoy high school. 

Still, though, I know it’s coming. We get letters and catalogs and thick glossy brochures in the mail every day for colleges from around the world. The PSAT last week counted for real this time. I had to attend the Junior College Kickoff meeting. 

I’m so excited to see where her next path will lead her. But at the same time, every time someone asks me about it, I politely say that she is still considering her options, and then I very much want to throw up.

I’m not ready. But thankfully, I guess I don’t fully have to be yet. 

After all, it’s still just junior year.