Senior events play like broken records, one after the next until graduation

Seniors, it is for thee that the bell currently tolls. Graduation is coming, alongside it real life, and we are all ambivalent or, in some cases, manically depressed. Every day that passes is another tick off our college clock and feelings of terror, excitement, optimism, pessimism, and gratitude to the universe for never again forcing us to satisfy an ISP requirement with Freshwater Biology are certainly running at the highest of octanes. We are going to miss our friends, apartments, lifestyles, and more, of course. Life is changing, we know that, but for now we are all striving to make the remaining month one of the most quintessentially “college” episodes of college (desperation, it seems, is a remarkable social motivator). What we seem to have overlooked while in the midst of our semester long, Lab n’ Lager-catered college funeral procession, however, is that it has all gotten unbearably annoying. Nearly every other weekend of the semester has held some sort of last hurrah, seniors-primarily event that recycles closure like one of the god damn Eagles’ 17 farewell tours. Though I may well be in the minority (geniuses usually are… keep reading, hate me later), I firmly believe it needs to stop.

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Why, Coleman, why? It is our last opportunity to do this, do not spoil it for us, we just want to savor our final month of college from the murky depths of a PBR tall guy. I hear you, fellow senior, and I understand. Really, I do. The problem though is that our rampant celebrating and divine Michelangelo crafted portraits of nostalgia have become sickly gratuitous. First came the 100 Nights coronation that, serving as the starting shot for senior’s final sprint (hurdles, occasionally, included), marked the beginning of our final 100 days of college. Next up was the Red and White dinner, the semi-formal incarnate of 100 Nights, minus the bodily fluid strewn McCue’s dance floor, of course. In the coming weeks seniors also have the Pub Crawl and senior class trip on the bill, intermixed, obviously, with Keene State College’s sure to be aptly titled “It’s a Fiasco” spring weekend. That makes four seniors-only celebration events in two months time. Needless to say, we are wallowing in the Zhenka and tears of our own demise. If this is how we handle college graduation then I would hate to see how we would behave before getting shipped off to war or shot up to the space station. A little perspective, I suppose, is a healthy thing.

Now I’m not indicting the rest of the senior class and galvanizing myself. Like you, I’m all for sentimentality, well actually, not really, and perhaps that’s the issue, but what I am saying is by the time May rolls around and we all realize we’ve been nursing senior-class-endorsed hangovers for two straight months, none of us are going to have any love left to give. Every two weeks we are all invited to the same room to drink and reminisce and remind ourselves just how close this is to being entirely over. In other words, not only is the woe-is-us syndrome in full effect but so is the-kick-em-while-they’re-down disease. I don’t know about you, but I can honestly say that I don’t want to be reminded every ten days that I am ten days closer to never being in college again. I know that already. I would hope that by now we all know that, otherwise May 7 might pack a cardiac-arrest inducing surprise. We don’t need to have it pile-driven (shout out to Austin 3:16, if he’s still alive) into our beings every other weekend. By the time actual graduation rolls around I’m going to be so emotionally destitute from all these one-last-time-for-the-Gipper! gatherings that I may no longer possess the capacity to care.

Desensitization to graduation realities and nauseatingly public displays of self-pity aside, however, I will say that these senior events are worthwhile and ultimately difficult to resist. We all want to see our friends, celebrate our attainment of college success, and surround ourselves with those that also intimately understand the emotional complexities of looming finality. In the frequency, though, there is an indulgence, a melodrama, and an inescapability that has become increasingly tiring as the semester has moved forward. I have taken to answering the question, “How have you been?” with a simple retort, “I’m graduating,” as if I expect others to first, care, and second, understand, and I have found myself largely preoccupied with grandiose issues of future, letting little things like shaving and sleeping slip to the wayside. So please, dear juniors, if you are reading this, do not repeat our mistakes. Enjoy your final semester when you get there, but do not inundate yourselves with redundant, goodbye-again ceremony after redundant goodbye-again ceremony. Do not dwell on the end or bathe in your senioritis. Please, I implore you, do it for yourselves, for it is already far too late to save us.

Coleman Bentley can be contacted at cbentley@keeneequinox.com