Buh-bye King’s

There’s less than three months left of the 2018-2019 school year and a whole class is about to leave their undergrad behind them. Some of them have already been accepted to grad school programs, some have jobs lined up and some have no idea what’s next.

All of them are completely normal and valid. After school is a scary time.

Jesse Bowles Conover is in his fourth year, and graduating with a degree in English. His biggest fear about graduation is that he’s always been a student. He plans to come back to school within the next decade, but this is the first extended period of time where he isn’t accountable to his education.

Instead of working on homework, he’ll just be working.

His biggest tip for students still fumbling their way through the maze called an undergraduate degree is to make friends with professors. He says they can open a lot of doors both “metaphorical and literal.”

Jessica Briand is in her fourth year of the King’s journalism program, and she’ll be graduating with a minor in international development.

She says fourth year has been the best for learning skills and actually putting them into practice. Briand thought it was a mystery coming into it, but so far, it’s turned out pretty well.

“Before I was kind of running around with my head chopped off,” says Briand. She didn’t know if she was actually learning in her first year to third year classes, or if she was just going through the motions. Once fourth year came along, she realised how much the other years had prepared her, even though it didn’t feel like it at the time.

Her biggest tip for students is to find a solid support group. She says they don’t need to be in the same courses as you, just as long as there’s mutual understanding. The only time you see them may be for an hour while you work on different projects, she says, but just having them around is so important.

“Find the friends that are going to support you,” Briand says. “Find the people that, when you are having a mental breakdown at two a.m., you can text them.”

I’m also graduating this May with a journalism major and a minor in political science – and I can tell you, it isn’t all roses and sunshine.

I’m excited to be moving into another chapter of my life, but to actually be done is surreal. To sit in a room full of people who were once strangers, but are now friends, and realize that soon it’ll all be memories. The fact that I won’t see these people everyday is kind of sad.

My biggest tip for students is not to forget that you’re only this age once. Yes, study hard and do well, but also have a life. Go out with friends, go on that date, play that board game. Do things that make you happy. Otherwise, you won’t make it.