Friday Feature: A Less-Than-Awesome Time to be a College Senior

Yesterday, my daughter finished her last college class. I walked in on it, returning home from my first trip out of the house in a month.

She was, after all, taking her class at our dining room table.

My daughter is a college senior -- part of the group coronavirus has stripped of its rituals, celebrations and, perhaps more important, the joy of hanging out and celebrating the last week of classes with a cohort of friends who have become like family. She, to her credit, is handling things well, but I am sad for her. I love having her home -- I'm immensely grateful for that, in fact, in light of everything that is going on. I'm also grateful that her college has taken this loss seriously and is doing as much as it can to keep spirits up, and still remains committed to an in-person graduation ceremony...someday.

We're pretty good at gratitudes around here and, while they help us to stay optimistic, they can only temper the surges of sadness, not erase them. Yesterday was a milestone, celebrated anticlimactically at our dining room table. We congratulated her, of course, before she returned to her room to work on final projects and papers, but it wasn't lost on us that she should have been celebrating this in the house she and her roommates had decorated way back in August.

This may feel like blip on the radar, but there's evidence to show that it's not -- that these losses could echo financially for this class of college seniors already trying to figure out how they're going to manage student loan debt.

But that is a worry for another day.

Again, I am grateful that she has lost out on experiences, not health or well-being, that the same technology that kept her classes going keeps her in touch with friends, and that she is one of the lucky ones who has a soft place to land while she figures all of this out.

But I am still sad that a time that was supposed to be joyous is, instead, a time to mourn all of the things senior year was supposed to be, and a little angry that when this is finally over, it might not be over after all.

All of that, however, is out of my control, and I didn't expect it all to hit me so hard. Moving forward, I will try to focus on the gratitudes because, well, that's what I do (and there is still a lot to be grateful for).

But, if you're feeling this too, know you are not alone.