The Factory Times is the Student-Run school newspaper for SUNY Poly.

Another Year

The end of the school year is right around the corner, and for some, it is their last year here at SUNY Poly; which must be exciting if not a little scary. For some, it is your first year, so the end of the year is definitely great in your eyes. However, for many of us, it is our in-between years. Junior year; you’re right on the edge of getting out of here, just one more year. That has to be an exciting feeling as well. But for sophomores, at least in my case, the end of this year brings a lot of strange feelings.

    This is the halfway mark for us. Meaning, it’s too far away from senior year to be excited about leaving soon, but it’s the perfect time to start worrying about where the time is going. You go to bed after your first day of classes freshman year, and you wake up at the tail-end of sophomore year, or at least that’s how it feels. It’s kind of frightening. It really makes you think about how you’ve been spending your time the last two years. It makes you question a lot of your past decisions. Should I have skipped all those 8am classes freshman year? Should I have gone out the weekend before finals week last semester? Am I even trying as hard as I should be right now, with finals week coming up and all the internships I applied for? Suddenly, everything becomes a test of resilience; a test of your will power. It is genuinely scary and uncomfortable.

    I don’t know if these feelings will go away or not. Of course they’ll go away eventually, but I don’t know what they’ll be replaced by or what it takes to make them go away. Maybe being a junior is just as terrifying. I imagine being a senior is probably even more terrifying. College is where you’re supposed to “figure yourself out” and a lot of the decisions you make now are going to shape the person you become in the future. It’s exciting, but it’s also scary, and that’s okay. Creating stories, figuring yourself out; I think it’s supposed to be that way. I hope you all have a great summer and if you’re leaving for good. Good luck!

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