"Senior Year"

I don’t know when my life will stop feeling like I’m a student. Speaking in semesters. Mentally grouping my life into four-year time periods. It just feels natural. So, I guess it is ironic that my one and only year of graduate school is actually my “senior year” of life thus far.

Do you remember high school? College? Distinct memories tend to stand out from freshman year and senior year. I would argue that, perhaps, most of the “meat” happens during those middle years, sophomore and junior years. But the memories come from years one and four. Perhaps life goes in these waves too.

Almost three years ago, I was sitting in a house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore overlooking the Chesapeake Bay writing this article for the Falls Church Current. I was halfway through my “freshman year of life,” The Falls Church Fellows Program. I remember being in a new place, far from home, and truly feeling like a “freshman at life.” Everything was new. A lot of it was scary. Yet, it was somehow all held together through a little bit of faith, a bit more love, and a whole lot of grace. It was a time full of new relationships and plenty of memories, and it changed my life forever.

There is plenty of “meat” I could discuss from those “sophomore” and “junior” years, but that is for another post. As I sit halfway through my “senior year” of life, and coincidentally, my fourth year in Virginia, I wonder. What memories will I take away from this year? What relationships? What will my next four years look like? Will my life continue in this academic model of waves of four? I often feel like that senior in college again, awaiting the next change in my life—my next “freshman year.”

I suppose the Bon Jovi lyrics I quoted three years ago still hold true. I am once again “halfway there.” Halfway to the end of another year. Halfway to another “freshman year” experience. Halfway to another big change. And it is frustrating and comforting all at once that I often feel that, in a way, I am in the same place I was three years ago. Still trying to navigate these changes, and certainly still “living on a prayer.”