beginning of the end

I can remember being a freshman at Jewell, experiencing college for the first time. I felt old and mature, until I met the seniors. They had this aura of confidence about them that made you think that if you got even the slightest bit near them that would spread to you. They had shown the ability to navigate the complicated maze of college academia, they were sophisticated and cool even if they were wearing raggedy old jeans and a t-shirt, and they knew exactly what they were doing with their lives.

Boy was I wrong.

They had no idea what they were doing, they may have thought they were cool and they had just enough practice to fool others into thinking they could handle the college world. This morning as I embarked on my last ever first day of fall semester classes of my undergrad I was hit with the feeling of being out of place. I thought at first it was because I could see the stark contrast between my confident walk and the anxious scurrying of the new freshman. Or that maybe I really haven’t assimilated as fully back into the United States culture as I thought and still breaking all sorts of social faux pas. Or maybe, no scratch that, I did put on deodorant this morning.

It took a little while but I finally settled on the fact that it was because I was once again in the group of the top dogs on campus. We were the oldest, most experienced, and arguably wisest attending classes this morning on campus. Odd. It’s a feeling I cannot describe. Maybe it was the added responsibility, or the slap in the face that the freshman have their future for the next four years figured out and I don’t even know what is for dinner tonight. Either way it was a little unsettling and weird.

The concept of age is a funny thing.