The college years might always and forever be the best time of your life. Finally living on your own, embracing the independence without conforming to any rules, which your parents might enforce while you’re home under their roof. College is a time to meet new friends, explore new life experiences, come across many new loves and discover more about yourself and the person you strive to be.
But as life progresses on, there will come a time when you will grow tired of the college scene and finally feel ready to look forward to new beginnings in the real world, including a career.
Here are the ten signs that you're ready to wrap up the college chapter:
The desire to go M.I.A. from campus life is strong.
This realization might come about when one or more of your friends ask you where you’ve been, saying that they haven’t seen you on campus in a while. Truth be told, you're on campus a lot; however, as far as just hanging out on campus goes, there’s no shot you’re spending more time than necessary on school grounds and risking running into anyone and everyone.
You find yourself spending more time at your own place, or your friend’s, doing absolutely nothing. Or if you have a job, you might find yourself clocking more hours than spending nights out on the tired bar scene. Living your college life off campus can also leave you out of tune with the latest happenings and gossip in your social circle.
The college party scene is losing its appeal.
After living out those many infamous nights during your freshman and sophomore year, you begin to ease back from the party scene as it becomes all too familiar. You start noticing that all the parties are the same, the people are the same and the lack of fun is the same. Although you’re starting to think that there's more to life than partying, it doesn't mean that you will go completely "cold turkey" on the partying. You just start being more selective of the parties you want to attend, or maybe you really will just go cold turkey on the parties.
Staying in at night becomes habit.
It's a shocker when you start to find yourself staying in on weekends more often than usual, especially if your friends know you more as the big party animal. Before you know it, you will have missed out on a few consecutive weekends of ‘raging.’ It's not always the end of the world if you miss out on a party or two. Staying in gives you the time to put more focus on schoolwork, that part-time job or just hanging out with friends.
You start putting more focus on your life goals and aspirations.
Somewhere down the line, you will slowly start to figure out what field you hope to get into and what you want from life. You start thinking about your surroundings, the people you surround yourself with, the things you do and the reinvention of your mindset. You can't help but wonder if you are satisfied with where you currently are in life and where you are heading, or if it’s necessary to make changes in the near future.
Conversations become more serious.
There is nothing like hitting up the dining hall with the homies and discussing the most important topics at the moment, all while relishing some of the school finest foods, sarcastically speaking. In the early college years, most conversations are usually about class, the opposite sex, music debates, who is the most attractive in the dining hall, etc.
But as the years pass by, the conversations begin to change. Your group starts wondering more about life, situations occurring outside of the college bubble, future career advances, how the opposite sex thinks and acts, etc.
You begin thinking about settling down.
It may not come at any exact time, but it will come to mind more frequently by the end of your college career: the thought of settling down. If you've dipped and dabbed all throughout most of your college career, there will come a time when you will begin to question whether or not you should start thinking about a serious relationship. I mean, after all the fun and games, eventually, you'll get tired of playing "smash and dash" with someone new every once in a while.
Everyone around you is settling down.
One day, you'll sit down and realize that everyone around you is either in a serious relationship, or well on his or her way. Even some of your friends in your social circle will be dating one another, and you’re left feeling like a lonely third, fifth or seventh wheel.
The excitement is gone.
You go through so much trial and tribulation throughout college, if feels as though you have experienced all there is to experience and seen all there is to see, from financial aid woes to relationship problems, from being rejected at that company to personal battles that arise from nowhere. Once you've gone through the worst, nothing seems to surprise you anymore, as you learn to understand that anything can happen at any time.
The countdown to graduation has begun, and the day couldn't come sooner.
That exact moment you begin to dream about “what comes next,” is the day when you begin your "countdown to graduation" calendar, whether it’s mental or physical – it exists.
You fully embrace change.
When it's all said and done, you will learn to fall in love with the person you have become. You begin to sit back and reminisce about how you never thought the day would come when you would see yourself in a totally different light. Heck, sometimes the changes you have made to get to where you currently are may surprise you.
Life has a funny way of showing that to you. When you finally sit down and analyze the experiences you've had and the greatness you’ve accomplished throughout your college career, it amazes you, and it’s all gone by so quickly.
