I spend a lot of my time worrying about the passage of time. I vividly remember saying to a friend, “Can you believe we’re almost done with sophomore year? Before you know it, we’re going to be seniors.” Now, I’m a senior, and I can’t fathom the fact that I’m graduating in less than two months. I think that, as seniors, we kind of disregard the sadness that comes along with graduating and instead hold onto the stress of preparation.

I’m stressing about taking my Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), getting into law school, moving off campus, getting my diploma and managing to pass my digital mapping class but not so much about the things I should be worrying about.

What I should be worrying about is not seeing the same faces every day, not being able to pop into the math lounge and see my best friend whenever I please or not waving “hi” to the same people I’ve been waving “hi” to for the last four years. I’m not worrying about my friends who will move back home across the country who I probably won’t see until someone gets married or the friends who are going far away for graduate school and will inevitably make new friends and be too busy to visit.

I should have this feeling of mourning the different stages of me during undergraduate school: Freshman year me would wake up at 6 a.m. to get ready for class and get her homework done the second it was assigned. Or sophomore year me when I would spend hours on the treadmill, listening to lectures. Or junior year me who was the happiest I’ve been in college, despite putting my responsibilities on the back burner. Senior year me, however, is a person I am happy to leave behind. Senior year me has become lazy and rushed, prioritizing the future rather than the present.

I should be mourning the joy of taking Shakespeare classes for credit and discussing literature for 85 minutes. Being praised for reading, whereas when I graduate, I will have to hold myself accountable for enjoying my lifelong, built-in hobby. I should be mourning random distribution classes that don’t matter to my degree, but spark either misery or joy, like my brutal sociology and therapeutic beginner ceramics classes.

I definitely won’t be mourning the communal bathrooms, pot-smoking neighbors or having to take people’s laundry out of the dryers. I won’t be mourning locking my keys out of my dorm or the loud deadbolts slamming against their frames and pulling me from my REM cycle.

I will be mourning the smell of the heat kicking in on the first cold fall day and late-night walks from The Hofstra Chronicle’s office back to my dorm. Hofstra cats, Hofstra lizards, Hofstra birds, these are all so uniquely Hofstra University. And, the koi pond that I always make sure to stop by.

During freshman year, I worried about how long we’d have to wear masks and what people would think when I took my mask off. I worried about COVID-19 and being quarantined.

During sophomore year, I worried about not having enough friends or not being involved enough. During junior year, I worried about not doing enough and falling behind. During senior year, I’ve worried about nearly everything from my health to my future, my relationships to my family and the list goes on.

All this time was spent worrying and all those worries were ultimately inconsequential. Where did all of that worrying get me? Senior year, I guess.

I’d like to think that I’m not the only one who spends the majority of my time worrying about stupid things. In fact, I worry about how much I worry. But all of that worrying surmounts to something great because if I weren’t so worried, I probably wouldn’t have worked so hard. So here we are. Six weeks out.