I feel old.
My younger sister just celebrated her 17th birthday on Sunday. It was weird enough when she got her driver’s license, but now she’s starting her college search and in a year and a half she will be graduating high school. I can remember when she started kindergarten.
I don’t like this.
This means that soon she’s going to be an adult. This means that I’m already an adult. In a few short months I’m going to be entering the real world.
I am not ready for this.
I have been getting more excited about no longer having homework and having a big girl job. Then I remember that all of that comes with real responsibilities. I will have to wake up before 9 a.m. and sweats can no longer be my signature look. I’m going to have to go shopping…
It’s weird to look back and see what life was like when I started college. When I still bought all of my textbooks, and I wore jeans every day to class and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life after college.
Actually, I still have no idea what I want to do with my life after college but it’s different now because the pressure is on for me to figure that out.
I remember that everything was easier; classes were easier, the work was easier, waking up for a 9:30 a.m. class was easier. It was all just easier, but at the time it seemed like it was so hard.
I recently talked to my younger sister about a 40- 50 page paper I had to write, it ended up being 72, and she was blown away.
She could not imagine herself being able to have that many words to write. I didn’t think about it until she said something but only a few years ago I found it difficult to write a five-page paper.
I remember coming to college not knowing what to expect. I had wondered how hard my classes would be and how many all-nighters I would have to pull. I do remember my older sister giving me one of the best tips before coming to college.
“People will always tell you about how busy you will be in college, which is totally true,” she said, “but no one will tell you about how much free time you’re also going to have.”
That actually helped me the most out of all of the advice I had received for the first semester.
I have changed so much since starting college. Remembering back to those earlier days has made me feel old.
Over the weekend I had taken a break from thinking about this and decided to watch Ron Howard’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” During one of the commercial breaks I looked up what year the movie was made thinking it was only about 8 years old. Nope. It was released in 2000. It’s 15 years old.
Howard’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is two years younger than my sister.
Now I feel really old.

SARAH BARTKOWIAK
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