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Year One

The ache that comes with leaving high school friends and family behind.
The loneliness that settles in after relocating.

Don’t try too hard not to look new
we can tell by the way you scan the halls between breaks,
searching for your next class.

The confusion of deciding
whether to go home after lectures
or where to sit and exist for an hour.

Everyone looks put together, lives neatly mapped out.
Life becomes a quiet competition of who performs stability best.

Struggling to wake up early
and still ending up in the wrong room.
You barely know anyone yet,
just rows of strangers you’ll share an entire semester with,
studying faces,
spotting possible friends,
or at least allies.

A reality show with no cameras
and only one audience member: you.

Welcome to Budgeting 101,
where every purchase must earn its place

Every Interac must give a convincing debate.
You may not notice it now,
but you will.
Debit alerts stacking like a hill of snow pile,

your allowance tobogganing downhill into the pit labeled insufficient funds.

Sleep becomes a privilege.
Naps, a luxury.

Year Two

Welcome to the year of second-guessing.
Your courses.
Your major.
Your choices.

You promised yourself this year would be different.
“No procrastination”

Right now, the first two weeks are obeying your commands like a genie’s last wish.

Permit me to be the villain,
or better yet,
I’ll simply wish you luck with those goals.

You compare yourself to classmates
who had productive summers,
who speak like future Elon Musks in the making.
Meanwhile,
the self-help book you swore you’d read
is still holding tightly to the book marker in the fourth chapter for the fourth week.

Year Three

Survival mode activated.

Will this degree actually be worth it?
Is everyone struggling this much
or is it just me?

And then the quiet realization:
it’s too late to turn back now.

Year Four

What does the future even look like?

Where do I go when I don’t have classes or a job yet?

Who am I
when I’m no longer a student?

The subtle questioning of identity.

Your final chance to save your GPA,
or accept that the outcome is already sealed.

Slowly realizing
you’ll lose access to student discounts.
No more Amazon or Spotify Premiums
to soften the blow.

This is what Adulting 2.0 feels like.

From the weight of each year,
you can probably guess where I am.
Yes!
the year I wrote the least about,
because like you,
I’m still trying to figure it out.