No one tells you how difficult leaving college is. The pressure is all on getting a job, maybe some kind of graduate school and moving on to the next chapter. But no one ever mentions how sad it is to move on to that chapter. 

Right now everyone is focused on job interviews and final exams, but I am focused on spending all the time I have left with my friends. College friends become your family, in a way. You see them every day for four years and maybe even live with them, and then everyone goes to a different city. Some are going to New Orleans, New York, Dallas, Houston or Los Angeles. The odds that we will all be in the same city at the same time ever again is pretty low. 

I like to call college the four-year paid vacation. It is the only time in your life when you have complete freedom with relatively few financial struggles. Your only job is to make decent grades. 

I never understood why people were sad to leave high school. After high school, my next step was planned. There was never a question for me that I was going to college. And the odds were that I was guaranteed to get into at least one school.

After college, nothing is guaranteed. 

There is absolutely no guarantee that you will get into graduate school, law school or medical school. There is still no guarantee that you will find a job that pays a decent salary.

A lot of us are on our own after college, but I for one do not feel mature enough to be a full adult. Sure, I’ve learned a lot, and I feel like I have some of it down. I’m registered to vote. I know how to pay bills. I can set up a wifi router. But I still don’t know how to file taxes or even how to put together my own bed. 

As sad as I am to leave, moving on is inevitable. I am thankful for the friends and memories I have made here, and hopefully, the adult world is not as miserable as I am imagining.

Freshmen and sophomores, life will never be as easy as it is right now. Go out with your friends, flirt with that person from your class and don’t get absorbed in stress. 
Lura Stabiler is a 22-year-old journalism senior from Baton Rouge.