From my archives: Second guessing as a second semester senior

For the past three years, I’ve been hoarding issues of The Campus in my closet. I’ve passed dozens of issues, some with faded ink, from my tiny Gifford room with a slanted ceiling to summer storage units to different corners of Forest Hall. With graduation approaching and limited space in my suitcase, I leafed through dozens of issues and clipped out my stories, carefully tucking them into a manila envelope for a future scrapbook.

As a senior prone to nostalgia (I mean, I scrapbook), flipping through old articles gave me another excuse to rethink and poke at my four years at Middlebury. My first year of college journalism left no paper trail; one of the many downsides to Covid-19 was no print newspaper. I started writing for The Campus after joining a Zoom room and did not meet other editors face to face until the spring as my first year was wrapping up. 

Now that I’m less than three weeks away from graduation, I can’t help but reflect and wonder if I “did it right?” This spring — with May 26 looming — I’m grappling with some “buyer’s remorse,” a feeling of regret. I’m flooded with anxiety about my choices around classes, activities and how I’ve spent my limited free time in college. 

Looking through my Campus articles, I have a sharper understanding of how much Covid-19 impacted my college experience, and how isolation and a lack of in-person activities permeated my first and second years here. We’ve largely returned to “normal life” and a campus full of in-person events, gatherings and classes. After reviewing my old bylines with the benefit of hindsight, I thought, “Should I have taken a gap year?” Whether walking around my last student activities fair, selecting classes or getting an email ping with an update about this fall, internal voices nagged me, asking why I didn’t take a film class or join ______ (insert a wide variety of student organizations, from Dolci to Middlebury Discount Comedy to Community Friends). I envy the younger students who have more time to stretch out, from my senior Feb friends who have another fall to the cheery baby Febs who inhabit the other end of my hall. 

I often turn to my mom for advice, and, depending on the situation, she reverts to the same two platitudes: “this too shall pass” or “it is what is it.” Many of my college hiccups — a rift with a friend, a lackluster grade — fall firmly in the “this too shall pass” camp. After a phone call home, a walk on the TAM, a cry, a decent night of sleep and a few days of perspective, I usually overcome the rough patch.

While the swirl of regrets and questions will eventually pass (this summer? next year?), this feels more like a “it is what is it” scenario. Because as much disbelief as I have about graduation approaching, college will soon be in my rearview mirror. I’ll blink the next two weeks away and be back in my childhood bedroom, face-to-face with the paper Middlebury pennant I huge with excitement four years ago, preparing to take my next steps as an alumna. 

I wrote an op-ed in the fall about how college life has, for better and worse, conditioned me to think about my life in seasons and semesters. Every new season and semester is marked by the arrival and departure of routines, professors and study spots. I associate every semester with specific songs, class friends and crushes.

Much of my trepidation around graduation is the fear of losing this scaffolding. My upcoming years will no longer fit into neat boxes punctuated with summer and winter breaks. I won’t spend my weekdays reading novels, gabbing on the radio airwaves and going on wooded walks with friends. With this slipping away, I’m craning my neck back and questioning if I squeezed everything I wanted out of my time here. 

There is, ultimately, no use swimming in second-guessing. Despite my 22-year-old self’s “better” judgment, I trust that my 18 to 21-year-old self made the best choices she could at the time, regardless of whether I now think they’re “right” or “wrong.” Oftentimes, there is no correct choice. I like to keep myself busy, and something I’ve valued about my Middlebury experience is how there are countless ways to fill my days. There’s nothing left to do but make peace with how I filled mine. For every path I did not take, there are just as many (or more) decisions I’m grateful I made, bringing me the friendships, skills and memories that make Middlebury such a difficult goodbye. 

One thing I’ll carry from my dorm room to new walls is my favorite print from Revolutionary Press. I bought it in 2021 when I spent a long, somewhat lonely summer on campus with lingering Covid-19 restrictions and limited people. Printed in purple ink, two people stand arm-in-arm in a river under a swirling sun. Below the image is a simple, moving quote from science fiction author Octavia Butler. Her words remind me that, whether I like it or not, “There is nothing new under the sun but there are new suns.”

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