As a senior, one would think by now you have your friends, your lifestyle at school, your regular routine of the daily grind and the occasional venturing out of your normal realm and schedule of what you do.

One thing I have forgotten about was the new friendships that develop during senior year. It’s humorous yet common how freshmen girls flee from guys their own age — jumping to make friends with sophomores, juniors and seniors, and leaving peers in the dust. Not that guys and girls in the same age group aren’t ever friends, but it just seems that younger girls want to be friends with older guys and older guys want to be friends with younger girls. Both likely have different reasons and motivations.

So after three years of being at the same school, running in the same circles with the same people, it’s now the end. What’s most interesting to me is the fact that freshman year it seemed as if everyone was more closed off to making friends, enlarging groups of friends and socializing with people their own age. Then it didn’t seem like such a big deal. But now it’s sad that it’s senior year I’m only still meeting some people for the first time.

One of my closest guy friends in high school always told me that he couldn’t wait until I was a senior girl and in a so-called “rut” — where the guys that we had “ignored” (or so they had claimed) for all of high school were now seniors and now it was their turn to revel in their own glory because they were the older ones and everyone younger would look up to them.

What I think really happens is that while senior guys may be “making friends” with younger girls — rather, preying on them (in a nice way, of course), they are really making friends with girls their own age for the first time. I know this isn’t an isolated point, because I’ve heard numerous people mention this before. It’s natural, in a way, that these occurrences take place in a sequential order.

My girlfriends and I were talking about what school would be like this year, on our own. Apprehensive at first, we were pleasantly surprised as to how much fun we were having and how much fun we had possibly missed out on in the past few years by not branching out enough. Now it has become apparent that while we have mixed emotions regarding graduation, there are even more making it harder to leave Madison. When in the working world is it ok to stay up until 4 a.m. dancing around an apartment just for fun? I don’t think many guys in suits are doing this after a long hard day at Goldman Sachs.

So the most important lesson I can take away from all of these learning experiences that take place every day is to live it up while you can. In a sane way, if possible. Enjoy everyone you meet, from all different places with different interests, backgrounds, hobbies and the like. It’s a once in a lifetime experience and it’s almost done before you know it. And some of these experiences you’ll never have the chance to do again.

Lindsay Zuckerman ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism.