There’s something really daunting about senior year of college. It’s normally the final year of study before a student receives a bachelor’s degree. It’s the year in which the student may be transitioning into a “real-life” career, as they say, and it’s the year in which the student has one foot out the door already.

It’s also, most mind-blowing of all, in a majority of students’ cases, the last of 17 to 19 consecutive years of education, classes, teachers, homework and general efforts for which we don’t get paid anything except diplomas and degrees.

With maybe a quarter of our lives spent on schooling for our future, the inevitable future itself is moments from arriving.

It has caught me off guard.

Personally, it feels like I’ve spent so long looking to the future that I got tired of waiting for it, yet here it comes. Of course, high school graduation was very much the same way. Finishing primary school was, and always will be, a major life cornerstone.

College is a choice. Any education after high school, in one form or another, is a choice for every person with a high school diploma. Because of this, finding myself less than a year away from a graduation of a type of education I chose to pursue—that’s something else. That has a deeper meaning to it.

This last year of secondary education is the last bit of a long jog or sprint, depending on the major and the class load, but it’s of something in which we chose to partake.

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I will acknowledge that this graduation does not signal the educational end of people pursuing an even higher level of education to become the next brilliant, invaluable citizens with doctorates.

For them, it’s less like the shore toward which they’ve been sailing, and more like an island along the way that serves no purpose but to say, “Hey, look! This isn’t the end game, but it’s neat, and it means something.”

Sure, the rest of the water between the island and the desired destination may be the roughest waters they’ve encountered yet, but they know that distance-wise and time-wise, they’re getting closer than ever.

Another more obscure thought that I had late at night one time is that, through the nearly 20 years of schooling, we rise to the top of the Tower of Education with great struggles, climbing and fighting, then, finally, we get to the roof, which is graduation, and we fly off from there like birds, free at last, all our efforts finally paying off.

Then, we hit some sort of eternal tornado. It’s not like life after college is really any easier. Also, associates of the Tower of Education are still asking for us to repay the loan money they gave us.

As hopeless as that may sound, I believe that seniors are coming close to graduating college, which they chose to attend, with new skills and qualifications in different fields. These degrees and what they symbolize will lead us to the most gentle tornado possible, maybe even one that’s no worse than the annoying Colorado winds we already get.

We, as the senior class of 2018-19, will ride these imaginary tornadoes into the world, and we’ll be ready.