Can you feel the pressure building? Losing your appetite or losing sleep? Do you feel the stress, or is it anticipation? Graduation is right around the corner, and for any of you who are like me, the stakes are rising. For me, my tenure here at RWC will come to a conclusion this spring, and I will be looking forward to moving on to the College-Conservatory of Music at the Uptown Campus. It becomes surreal to think the graduation is quickly approaching. It’s cliché, but it truthfully does feel as though I started here just last week. The reality of it all is certainly beginning to set in along with the anxiety and stress that is part of earning a degree.
As a first time graduate, I am nervous. It could be that my program is very demanding and has high expectations for its students, but I would hope that any college level program would have those sorts of standards. Some people would look at the situation and, like me, could be very nervous. Others could be thrilled, and then others could be loathing the day they graduate and have to “get out in the real world.”
No matter how you feel, graduation is an exciting time that not everyone has the ability or means to experience. Any and everyone who has put the time and effort into earning a degree should be immensely proud of themselves. Regardless of major, it isn’t easy to get through college, nor should it be. So be proud!
It could be that I am an eternal optimist, but I have always looked at this experience as an opportunity. Although, yeah, we have to pay loads of money for tuition, but isn’t getting a higher education one of the most vital opportunities that someone can have? It was and still is for me.
I will be forever grateful to the people that I have met here and who have helped me in my professional and collegiate careers. I suggest to everyone who is enrolled now to look at this experience as the one of the greatest opportunities that they will have, and a little bit of hard work now will pay off exponentially in the future. I would like to share a quote that I live by and that holds its value every day: “You can never control the outcome of a situation, but you can always control the effort.” Good luck to everyone!