The campus staff and students think of me as a sociable person, and they’re not wrong. But when one of my professors pushed me forward into a room full of seniors on their last research ceremony, I was surprisingly at a loss for words.

We had planned a farewell party for them—cakes, balloons and all—but nobody had told me that I, of all people, would have to deliver a speech. I stood there, stuttering about inspiration and congratulating them, admiring all 60 of them in their shining Honors glory, professional physical therapists to-be. I knew most of them as friends and friends of friends and as tutors and role models, but in that instant, I was hit with a wave of realization: this will be me in less than a year.

After my awkward spontaneous speech was over, the cake was cut, and the seniors rejoiced. One of them even made a sentimental video clip of the batch’s memories together. She turned down the lights, and for a good ten minutes brought a wave of nostalgia to her colleagues. It was one of the most depressingly beautiful things I had ever seen. Amidst all the excitement and relief bubbling around me, I realized that my eyes were welling with tears, and I proceeded to cry my heart out, thankful for the darkness of the lecture hall.

There’s nothing unusual about graduation anxiety, and yet I don’t think anybody can express the magnitude of overwhelming sadness and an odd, empty sense of fear that pervades the mind of most upcoming seniors.

In many ways, I despised my university. It was a frustrating place, the clinical curricula in dire need of updating, and my major is quite complex as it is. I often found myself subject to shockingly sexist bylaws, cultural differences, and racist attitudes from fellow peers. As a foreigner, I certainly struggled to fit in, and I still have yet to, if ever. Moreover, the overwhelming wave of homesickness still hits me every couple of weeks, and I find myself yearning for the cold Canadian winters, for my childhood friends, for the neat little roads of my hometown, and for the strangely pleasant repose of individualism.

But in the scope of all things, I felt myself gradually mature into a confident, sociable adult who understands the value of education, money, and most of all, human relationships.

I outgrew my procrastinating high school habits, learned to make better arguments and stand up for myself, and most of all realized what I want in life. I learned to understand and live with fellow people who are radically different from me and to tolerate their pitfalls where need be. I became self-aware and conscientious of social constructs and learned to battle everyday social injustice single-handedly. If I hadn’t found myself surrounded by these challenges, I would never have come to terms with what I value the most. And I can safely say that I am not alone in reaping these benefits; each and every person walks away from university feeling different, often for the best.

One could argue that self-actualization is not necessarily to be found in an academic environment or that university is not essential to the development of a young adult. However, when you’re cast into a stimulating environment where the options are limitless and your success is highly dependent on your own willpower, you inevitably come to see the world in a different light. Ultimately, university serves as a delicate bridge between the ignorant bliss of youth and the ghastly and complex world of adulthood, and the prospect of what is to come terrifies me to no end.

Although learning is a life-long process, the sheltered environment of a university or college is but a fragrant bubble of the real world. There is moral, academic, and financial support when you need it. There are languages to learn, plays to see, events to attend, and experiments to conduct. There are tables shared and dinner split among friends that become family, bonding over struggles and interests, exchanging whispers about how they wish to change the world. There are thousands upon thousands of books to read in vast, beautiful libraries where you find yourself living out your days. And even you know that two lifetimes would not be enough to consume all the knowledge they hold between their covers.

There are lecture halls that can house hundreds of people your age, sharing your ambitions, from different parts of the world under one roof. Many of them shine with determination, seeking inspiration from provocative dialogue and debates with professors. Some of them go on to become Nobel prize winners, and others realize they could do better without a degree. Some of them become lifelong friends, business partners, spouses, and family. Many of them are temporary, but each will leave you with a lesson learned and thicker skin. In a way, you don’t really lose anything.

I look at the friends I’ve made at university throughout the years, surrounding me, ephemeral but essential to my existence nonetheless.

I admire how much they’ve all grown, once confused and eccentric, now a shade wiser and a shade smarter. Their taste in clothing has changed, as has their taste in music, in partners, in political opinions, and in lifestyle choices. Pretensions seem to fall away by now, and mistakes made are taken lightly as lessons learned. The shadow of adulthood has crept into the crevices of their faces, the looming uncertainty of what is to come flickers behind their worried eyes. Nobody wants to talk about it, and nobody does. Not until its 3 a.m. and the night before graduation when the anxiety of both the end and the beginning of everything seems to crush their naivety forever.

There are professors who will make you question everything you have ever believed in, their lectures leaving you perplexed and curious. There are professors who can, indeed, be assholes. After all, they too are human, and they too are ripe with biases and surrounded by vicious stigma and odd experiences. You find yourself debating them, disagreeing with their theories, mulling over their opinions with a pinch of salt. They drive us to learn more, to provoke discussion, to assess our upbringing. But it was from them that I implemented the scientific method in my life, and it was from them that my sense of rationale blossomed. In spite of the colorful personalities and the disagreeable dispositions of some, I attained my very first taste of wisdom from their tutorship, however vague.

I will miss all of this, I think to myself as I walk through the empty hallways at the very end of the last semester. There will never again be a time when I will feel so secure, so sheltered, with a hundred hands holding me upright when all I want to do is collapse into a heap on the floor. There will never again be a time where I will make friends as easily, love as easily, and understand as easily as I do now. There will probably never be a time where my peers, from different walks of life, become my neighbors, my family, and my home. With the semester starting again in less than a month from now, I can feel the dread eat away at me as I try to grasp the hours slipping through my fingers.

I vow to savor every moment that comes my way, but I know that when the day comes, I will be weak and helpless in the face of time.

I promise myself I won’t quarrel with those close to me, will study well before the exam season kicks in, will practice my badminton drills on the daily, and will live it up with every social event that comes my way. But I know that the stress of the semester and research papers will demolish my promises to bits, and the iconic planning fallacy will swallow what’s left of my numerous, unrealistic goals.

But what about time after university? Those years appear to take up a majority of my coming life, and the undergrad years seem like such a small time frame in that massive era they call adulthood. Even if I do continue my studies, where will they take me? What internships? What jobs? Will I even enjoy what I do, or will it become a chore to hustle through until I can get home, eat, sleep, shower, and repeat? What about the people I love and the friends I have? Will they disintegrate and blow away into the winds, never to be seen again?

The surplus of unanswered questions keeps me up at night, and the fear of losing the stray remainders of what’s left of my childhood to the throes of time and space haunt my daydreams.

In spite of the crushing anxiety of the unknown, one thing is for certain: The moment my name is called up on the podium, my diploma ready to be handed to me after my years of hard work and sleepless nights, I will experience a sense of joy that will be unlike anything I have ever felt before. Like a first kiss, the first plummet off the diving board, or the first perfect cartwheel, it will be irreplaceable and perfect, a moment unforgettable and inherently priceless. My eyes will capture the vast audience watching me, and for a single split second, I will become the center of their attention, the center of the universe.

This moment, this fleeting, flawless moment, is what I, along with thousands of others, plow through the hardships of university for. And like most humans, in the constant pursuit for the simple pleasures, I will know that the rare, raw emotion of that moment will have been worth my time, free of regrets, setbacks, or disappointments.

And when I leave the podium, as fast as I had reached it, as brief as the fluttering of the wind, I will be both elated and brimming with sorrow. The end is the satisfying close to a book that was just too good to finish, whose pages too few and its ink, once seemingly infinite, now exhausted.