Senior Year(s)
August 18, 2025
Writer: Zoe Gellert
Edited by: Zoe Gellert
No one talks about how different senior year feels the second time around.
My sister and I are almost exactly four years apart. She’s about to start her senior year of high school, nostalgia-soaked and full of “lasts.” She bought a Peppa Pig backpack with her friends, picked out the classic first day outfit (senior shirt and jean shorts), and is writing supplemental essays as if a college decision could script her future. It’s her last year at home, so she’s soaking it in. She thinks she knows everything she needs for what’s next. She doesn’t know yet that what’s next isn’t “real life” either.
I don’t blame her; I was her. I took senior photos, attended pep rallies, planned the barbecue and prom, and floated through graduation, believing I was perfectly prepped for adulthood. I was so eager to leave that I couldn’t see what a utopian world college could be.
College is a carefully curated universe where day parties become night ragers, your friends become family, and everything changes faster than you can process it. Only now, at the very beginning of my second senior year, have I realized how the dichotomy of senior year can break your heart a little.
It's as if I blinked and three years passed me right by. Each memory simultaneously feels like it was yesterday and years ago. It all feels close enough to hold in my hand: the hum of the air purifier in my freshman dorm, the unmistakable Monroe Hall shower smell, the sunrise off the Mayer balcony, the petty rage of someone moving my wet laundry.
But there was a time I thought I had made the wrong choice. As a Spring Scholar recovering from surgery and living with girls two years older, I felt isolated, and mostly by my own doing. For the first time, I had complete autonomy. The freedom I had begged for arrived with a side of anxiety I didn’t expect.
I started journaling every day. Even when I had nothing to say, I used it as a way to anchor myself. Slowly, I realized I was the only one responsible for creating the experience I wanted.
By second semester, I found my people. By the end of sophomore year, the version of me who thought she had chosen wrong felt like a stranger. Junior year was a high that lasted eight months—chaotic, joyful, adventurous, and humbling.
Now I’m here, staring down senior year, stunned by how quickly it came and by how open the future feels. The “best four years of my life” are close to rolling the credits, and I still don’t have a perfect next step to slide into. That’s terrifying and frustrating. It’s also honest.
So while my sister decorates her car for her last first day of high school, I’m flooded with gratitude for the exact moment I’m in. I love Tulane. I love New Orleans. I owe myself one more year of saying yes—yes to friends, to small traditions, to hard work, to the person I’m building for the version of me who will one day hold New Orleans as a feeling more than a place.
Senior year of college isn’t the end of the best years. It’s the practice round for believing the best is always ahead. So I’m going to soak this year in, thoroughly. Not because it’s last, but because it’s next.