Opinion | Growing Pains in Final Year

By Luana Crosta, Fourth Year International Business Management

This piece is for all my fellow final years also caught up in the whirlwind of emotions, expectations and responsibilities that come with this significant time in our lives.

As much as we didn’t want to believe it, we were all told our years at university would fly by - and indeed, they have. Remarks about how this would be the best time of our lives loaded on the pressure for us to make the most of our time here before we had even arrived. I’m sure university has been an incredible time for many people, but that’s not to say it’s always smooth sailing for everyone.

This year, we face many more hours in Wills as most of us encounter our biggest academic challenge yet. If you’re anything like me, you’re still unsure of what career path to even go down, yet the Post-Grad gods have conjured up their deadlines to fall at the beginning of term, as we’re desperately trying to establish that golden routine.

It’s not just the academics or career decisions weighing us down; the social aspect of university life adds its own unique pressure. As we enter the last year of our precious student experience, we feel an urge to cherish each moment with the friends we have made who have become like family. We feel compelled to carve out time for these relationships, quite rightly, in order to continue building memories together. All the while, in the back of our minds, reminding ourselves that we should be knuckled down, focused on earning a first and sending off cover letters. To put it simply, final year feels like we’re simultaneously preparing for the future while racing to keep up with the present.

I change my mind weekly about my future career as I struggle to envision myself in just one role. This week I am a newspaper writer!(?) Often this is framed as a negative and, for a long time, I viewed it as such. However, after many conversations about the future with friends and family, I’ve come to see it differently. Perhaps I’m telling myself this for comfort, like how I am babbling to my university’s newspaper as a strange form of catharsis. But I truly believe that those of us unsure about our post-graduation lives should not feel trapped by this uncertainty, since this is one of the only times in our lives where we have the choice to do exactly what we want to do, when we want to do it.

I am aware this piece jumps from complaining about the struggles of final year to offering advice, but the reason for writing is the hope it brings some comfort to anyone feeling the same. I chose to title it 'growing pains' because that’s what I’m experiencing most acutely. I assumed by now, after 3 years, I would have found my footing. But the reality is each year of university brings its own set of challenges and we grow alongside them. 18-year-old me moving into Hiatt Baker Halls is vastly different to 21-year-old me writing this piece, except for the fact I have the same people I met in those halls sitting beside me in our freezing fourth-year house helping me edit this column. This growth we’ve all gone through is thanks to the opportunities, as well as challenges, university life has thrown at us. Whether you’re a first year reading this, struggling with connecting with your new flatmates, or a fourth year feeling completely different from what I’ve described, it’s important to remember that growth presents itself differently on everyone. There is no single correct path to follow through university, and these growing pains are just the small price we pay for entering our fabulous twenties!