Nancy Ceja
Staff Writer
Mid-Life Crisis: the emotional turmoil that grips most middle-aged people. A crisis of identity loss and judgment, the time to buy a hot sports car and overuse your credit cars in hopes of never accepting you are halfway done with your life.
It happens to the best of us, it even seems to be grabbing at twenty-year-old college students.
It’s common to question if your major is right for you or what will happen after college, but these thoughts are beginning to hit undergrad students with their own version of a mid-life crisis, the “Mid-Degree Crisis.”
When trying to choose a profession at the ripe age of seventeen there are going to be problems in your twenties, especially if you have no idea what you are going in for. Whether you had your life planned since the fifth grade, or if you just now figured out what your passion is, the realization of almost being finished can loom over any student, at any age, and in any field.
Sophomores are prime candidates to fall victim to this since most students are about halfway done with their degrees.
“Now that I take a second to think about it, you’re right about being almost done. I’m just naturally stressed from finals and classes in general. The thought of graduating with a college degree has got all my nerves on standby now,” one stressed sophomore said. “But in all seriousness, I can’t imagine myself with a degree and a real job. It seems so far away, but I know it’ll come sooner than I think it will.”
“In my freshman year I changed my major roughly three times, my minor two times,” another sophomore turning junior said. “I kept thinking I wanted to do something in dental, but that was too gross even for me, I changed it again to psychology, and finally I’m happy in biology. I want to go deeper in microbiology, so grad school is definitely an option. Thinking about it, I might be a little stressed about turning into a junior next semester, but I wonder what the seniors are feeling right now. I wonder if they think they made the right choice.”
However, that does not mean every sophomore is at the mercy of feeling dread and misery, another student said, “It does not feel like I’m halfway done, but at the same time, it feels that I’m that much closer to graduation, it’s more stress[ful] if anything about being close to a degree and then having second thoughts.”
So whether you are a sophomore or a senior, the idea of graduating college can be a pretty stressful event for anyone. Try not to panic too much though, you and many others will be the next generation of degree-working individuals towards a path of success. So continue bearing through those textbooks and tests, and hopefully, you won’t be too stressed out to realize you are almost finished with the first step of your hard-working careers.
