Top tips for graduating seniors to remain sane

The time of year is finally upon us. It’s after spring break, and mustering up the energy to get anything done seems impossible. Worse still is the plight of the Second Semester Senior, who is a mere five weeks away from graduation and leaving the cradle of Miami undergraduate career forever.

As you cling to your last shreds of sanity, keep in mind The Miami Hurricane’s tips for surviving as a second semester senior.

 Make To-Do Lists. 

So Many To-Do Lists. 

There are a lot of things lefts to do before graduation. So many things, in fact, that it makes your brain go blank when you try to count them. So do yourself and everyone around you a favor and make a to-do list. Or six. Whatever it takes to organize your thoughts on paper, so that they don’t have to stay in your head. Just like you’ve got that graduation countdown on your phone, use the lists to help you get through the night without cradling the bottle of wine to your chest too hard.

Double-check that everything is in line for graduation 

Is that incomplete from junior year taken care of? Have you paid your tuition bill? Are you going to pass all your classes this semester? Now is the time to make sure you have all of your ducks in a row. Because as much as you don’t need another thing to worry about, the panic will be horrendous if, come May, you find out you have a minivan filled with relatives driving down and you won’t even be allowed to graduate.

 

Take advantage of the resources 

As a second semester senior, you realize one massive flaw in our $120,000 education — no one taught us how to apply for jobs. Sure, Toppel has resume critiques, but where were the lessons on writing cover letters for non-traditional companies? What about classes on when it’s all right to message a hiring manager on LinkedIn, whether you should paint your nails for a Skype interview or how long you should wait to send a follow up email after an in person interview?

We’ll have to Google the answers to these questions for the most part, but while you only have a few weeks left, make the trek over to Toppel and make uses of the resources while we still have them. Set up a mock interview to calm your nerves, or have them go over your resume, at the very least. Because even though more work sounds counterintuitive to lowering your stress levels, it sure beats realizing at 3 a.m. that you applied to your dream job with a resume that said “ass” instead of “as.”

 

Party like you’re a first semester freshman 

Forget the final papers, forget the nine-hour job interview, forget the eight years of medical school and residency looming in your future, and party away your last breath of freedom like it’s your first taste all over again. But this time, it’s legal.

The stress of the imminent future may have made you hunker down and spend your nights writing papers and applying for jobs, but that is your mistake. You’ve spent four years perfecting the art of balancing partying and school work, and now it’s time to put those skills to good use. So spend your weekdays selling your soul to the homework and unemployment gods. But the weekends? Baby, those are all for you.