Written by Madeleine Minks 

Art by Lucas Eglin 

I have a nasty habit of thinking I am going to die all the time.

If I have a headache, it’s an aneurysm. If my chest hurts, it’s a heart attack. If I’m out of breath, it’s…also a heart attack? You get the idea. Logically, I know I’m jumping to drastic and unreasonable conclusions. Still, if there is even the tiniest chance that something bad could happen, you can bet it’s already infiltrated my thoughts and spread like a virus. 

It’s these chronic anxieties that have resulted in what I have cheerfully dubbed “doomsday thinking.” The closer I come to some sort of milestone, the more I think that the end is nigh. Maybe it’s the writerly way to imagine a poetic end, even if that end is tragic; your death, someone else’s death, some irreversible tragedy. In reality, those things can–and do–happen all the time, regardless of circumstance. Life is not a fairytale. I know this. I’m not Eurydice on her wedding day, oblivious of the snake lurking in the grass until its fangs have already sunk into her. I’m just some girl, anticipating a snake that may or may not come. 

 Throughout this past week, doomsday thinking has led me to start noting the first lasts.  The last first day of classes. The last first meal of the semester. The last first snowstorm. The last first Wednesday of your last semester of college, my academic advisor lightly teased me when I brought up the subject in her office. (I always stop by her office before my classes officially start. How are you? she’d asked, as always. Oh, you know, I’d responded, as always). The last first visit with my academic advisor. 

Then there are the things I did for the last time. The last time moving back in after a break. The last time I passed the whale tails statue on the way into Burlington. The last time hugging my friends hello. The next time we hug like that it’ll be a goodbye. 

As I progressed through the first week of my last semester, I began to question why we place so much weight on these moments–a question I feel scientifically and emotionally incapable of answering. I can, however, examine why I place so much weight on these moments. 

When I was in high school, I looked forward to May 2020 with the desperation of…well, with the desperation of a teenage girl. There’s no metaphor that will portray that desperation better than the actuality. It was hard not to look at my graduation date that way; it was flaunted everywhere. In our paperwork, in our school emails, in our college applications. Class of 2020. 20minks@minuteman.org. Year of expected graduation: 2020. I can’t remember now, but I must have felt this way in middle and elementary school, too. Class of 2016, class of 2013.

Year of expected graduation: 2020. There’s a word there that I’ve always gotten hung up on: expected. They put that there as a sort of asterisk–a what if. As we’ve established, I’ve made myself a connoisseur of what-ifs. 

There is a part of me that always assumed I would never graduate college; even now, closer to the finish line than ever, that part still exists. That something–my physical health, my mental health, my family’s well-being–would go drastically downhill and force me to drop out. I was always waiting for it, even as I pushed along through the years. Because another part of me knew the logical truth: I had thought this way before. I had feared the last first day of elementary, middle, and high school the same way I had feared the last first day of college–and yet here I am, in college. Still pushing along, still worrying. Still anticipating the closure of walking across the stage with equal parts dread and excitement.

I’ve asked a few of my classmates how they feel about graduating, unsurprised to discover that most of them feel the same way: thrilled and relieved to be almost done, but terrified of what comes after. We’ve built so much of our identities around being students; losing that (for those of us not pursuing grad school) feels like losing a part of ourselves. Instead of mourning that lost student, we have to–gulp–get full-time jobs and pay bills, if we haven’t been doing it already, and find out who we are without our academic statuses. 

And yet! We are so tired. I see it in all of us; in the droop of our shoulders, and in the heavy sighs exchanged between classes. It’s true for all college students, but the class of 2024 carries the additional weight of having never done this before. We never got proper closure from high school. We never got prom, senior field trips, senior pranks, goodbye parties with friends. Most of us got socially distanced or drive-thru graduations, but I wonder if it wasn’t enough. If parts of us are still waiting for diplomas that have been gathering dust in our drawers for three and a half years now. One day we were in school, surrounded by our friends, then…not. Then we got two days off, then two weeks, then…forever. High school didn’t end, it just sort of…paused. Then never resumed.

Maybe that’s why these last-firsts hold so much weight for me–and, presumably, for others too. We aren’t used to that sort of academic closure. We’ve never taken the grad pics, gone to each other’s parties and tossed the hats. Most of us never walked across that stage. The finality of it looms in front of me, and feels both far too close and impossibly far away at the same time. I’m not ready to be done!, my brain cries, while at the same time wailing,  please, god, please, let it be over!

As irritating as this internal conflict can be, I’d like to think I’ve learned some things in between all the firsts and last-firsts. Being distraught about life changes is part of…well, life. There is a grief in growing up; I’ve started to realize that, no matter how much the thought of my younger self might make me cringe, I’m always grieving her. There are things she has that she doesn’t know she will lose–water bottles, friendships, family–that I will always want back. And as I look forward, I wonder what my older self has to mourn. It makes saying goodbye to the life you have that much harder.

The truth is, I see the lesson here, plain and simple: treasure what you have. Make the most of the present, rather than agonizing over the time you’re losing. Let yourself be in the room with your friends, rather than missing what isn’t gone yet. Yet. It’s the yet that always gets us, isn’t it? We worry about the future, we get caught up in the past, and the present continues to elude us.

The good thing about last firsts, though, is that they give you a chance to try again. There’s a chance to try and embrace that present, to teach yourself not to think five steps ahead. You’ll be someone else when you graduate, it’s true. Aren’t you excited to meet her?