Senior Column:The thought of graduating is bittersweet

It is crazy for me to think that the thought of leaving Se­ton Hall has me so upset when my first visit here was a "why not check this place out" sort of situation. I was about 95 percent set on going to a dif­ferent school in New York and playing basketball there when I received the open house fli­er in the mail. I thought that I might as well give it a shot and hopped in the car with my mom to my eventual second home.

I don't know what had caught me about this place that miser­able rainy day, but I couldn't be happier that I chose to be a Pirate. Pirate Alerts, 5 a.m. fire alarms and Cryan's clos­ing aside, this place has truly me into a person I am so proud to be.

I constantly hear people saying that they cannot wait to graduate, and I will admit, last year amongst some hard classes I thought I was ready to say goodbye to South Or­ange and go pretend to be a real functioning adult in the business world. It is actually comical how wrong I was just a year ago about how I thought I would currently feel.

I can already en­vision the amount of tears that will be free falling on the day of gradua­tion when I have to leave all my friends and the comfort that this place provides. To those thinking they want to get out of here as fast as they can, I ask you to just pause and reflect. If you are having an absolutely mis­erable time here, you are most likely doing it wrong.

College can be hard. Sure, you have homework and you go to class for a few hours a week, but college is ultimately a giant sleepover with your friends.

If you need someone to talk to, you have plenty of op­tions. I learned, a little later than I would have liked, that the ability to surround your­self with people you adore is truly the greatest blessing that college could ever give you. So, if you are sitting by your­self doing homework immerse yourself with those you care about, because the little mem­ories are what matter and you will miss them before they are even gone, like I am right now.

If you feel you don't have those connections just yet, join a new club, go to that party you were just contemplating or sit next to someone new on a warm day on the green. I say this because feeling a little foolish or intimated is going to be better than sitting in your cubicle a few years from now wishing you took better advan­tage of your four years here.

I am still in the stage of deni­al about graduating and I hope that all of the days until May 20 drag by. Of course, I will face the day when it comes with pride and happiness about my achievements but I know that I wouldn't have the same smile on my face if I had spent the last four years of my life anywhere but here.

Stephanie Vedral is a senior sports management major from Yonkers, NY. She can be reached at stephanie.vedral@student.shu.edu.