As far as religious doctrines go, I don’t remember much from my eight-year stint in Catholic school. The lessons occasionally flash bright in my mind, triggered by some sort of stimulus, like an evangelical billboard on the highway or a literary allusion. Yet, one concept has always stuck with me: limbo. Something about that transitional state, not quite hell but not quite heaven, struck me as the worst possible fate.
Running the risk of sounding painfully dramatic, I believe some parallels can be drawn between limbo and your third year of college.
This semester marks the first time in 20 years that I dreaded going back to school. My typical academic enthusiasm was gone, replaced by what can only be described as a pervasive foreboding. I was still recovering from a hellish Fall semester and couldn’t fathom tackling what was built up to be my most challenging four months to date. I wasn’t the only one who felt this way: Holiday conversations with roommates and best friends alike centered on packed Spring schedules and our fates as future mole people.
But what truly makes junior year feel so similar to limbo is the simultaneous sensation of mobility and inertia. Graduation is far away enough that you can’t make any concrete post-graduation plans, but you’re forced to buckle down and work toward some vague future forged solely on assumptions. I’ve alluded to my incessant need to plan in past columns, so it goes without saying that this is somewhat of a nightmare for me.
Junior year is a paradox. Former classmates are having children, and yet I still can’t rent a car. I’m told to cherish my waning collegiate years whilst constantly planning for what comes after. I’m sent Snapchats of drunken debauchery from one friend and corporate cubicles from another. I joke about the youthful naivete of freshman friends even though I still have my mom schedule my dentist appointments.
Junior year is built on the incessant paranoia that you’re one step behind everyone else. While you’re scrounging for an internship interview, others have already been offered the jobs of their dreams. While you’re buried in an LSAT/MCAT/GMAT workbook, someone else has already been accepted to a top-choice graduate school. It’s an unavoidable fact of life that will push you to work harder but can also drive you insane if thought about too deeply.
So, there has to be a bright side to this, right?
I suppose the ambiguity we’re forced to live with can have some benefits when viewed from the right perspective. Our arm’s length distance from reality gives us the opportunity to hope, for starters. We may not have even a vague concept of where we’ll be in three years, but that gives us a lot of room for exciting possibilities. Also, there’s still plenty of time left to relish your undergrad experience and avoid adulthood at all costs. Be naive. Be dumb. Break some rules (all in appropriate amounts, of course).
It can often seem as though we’re inundated with orders to plan for the future: academic plans, career plans, relationship plans. I almost lost it when a credit union employee asked if I had a 401k plan at the ripe old age of 19. Planning is helpful, but so is being present in the moment. Sometimes we forget that not having a direction in life is just as damaging as realizing that you lost your youth in a whirlwind of anxiety. So, I suppose the overarching message here is to take a deep breath and realize that you’re going to be ok. While I try to take my own advice, you should, too.
Marisa Papenfuss is a UF English junior. Her column appears on Tuesdays.
