Being a senior in college is weird. The past four or five years of your life have seemed to take forever, yet have flown by at the same time, and you have the rest of your life knocking on your front door. As we all know, this last weekend was homecoming, and for being a senior, knowing that this was my last Hobo Day as a student brought a handful of emotions with it.

This is my third Hobo Day, and I have gotten to walk in the parade every year so far, but this past Saturday was bittersweet. It was my last chance to walk in

the parade, knowing the next time I see it, it will be from the sides of the road, and not walking down the middle of it. It was my last chance to go to the Hobo Day tailgating lot as a student, and almost the hardest of all, it was my last Hobo Day football game in which I would be standing in the student section.

My last, my last, my last. Everything as a senior seems to be about your last chance of doing something, but after all the events that Saturday had to offer; I decided to change my mindset a little bit. Yes these are the last chances I have to do some of these things, but what does that really mean? To me it means that the next time I do them, I will get to experience them for the first time, all over again, just like I did as a freshman. I will come in with a different view of the happenings of Brookings, and

I will be in a different phase of my life.

Senior year is known for its goodbyes to everything that we have known for the past (roughly) four years, but why is that? It seems like everyone has something big going on after we all graduate in May, whether that is graduate school, getting a “big boy/big girl” job, or even if it is deciding to spend the rest of your life with someone, this idea of graduation is tied to the idea that we have to say goodbye to the life we used to know.

There are the memes out there that say “I am at that weird point in my life where half of my friends are getting married and the other half are too drunk to function.” While this is funny, and can, in some ways, apply to everyone in college, it seems to be truer than ever in your senior year. I fully acknowledge that not

everyone fits into this category, heck I myself do not fit into either of those options, but the impending graduation is ever looming, no matter what stage of life you are in.

In all honesty, I had not even thought about what being a senior would be like until I had to sign up for and take my LSAT about a month ago. This test actually happening, and having to take the results and apply them to where I want to go to law school was way more than I was ready for. Signing up for the LSAT meant that I actually had to take the LSAT, and taking the LSAT meant that I had to start applying to law schools, and applying to law schools, means I have to decide where I want to go, and I do not know about every other senior on this campus, but I was just not ready for that. The future is right here, and now we have to grab it.

Every step of the way, life prepares us to be that much closer to fulfilling our dreams and being able to wake up and do what we have spent so much time striving to do. While I know that I still have three years of law school following graduation in May, some do not and go straight into the workforce, using the skills we have been taught here in Brookings to lead us, as the class of 2015, all over the world. May seems so far away, but in reality it is not. Yes, in a few months I am going to have to say goodbye to Brookings, but I also get to say hello to the next step of my journey. Enjoy the time you have here at SDSU and then know that endings are just beginnings in disguise.