Graduation is Right Around the Corner

By: Rachel McCloskey

When I was in 11th grade, my English teacher had our class write college essays. Soon enough, I would have to write one for the real deal, so it was good practice at the time. 

I wrote about the power of music. That year, I spent most of my time in the back of my friend’s car. My friends and I would often spend our weekends aimlessly driving around, blasting our favorite songs, exploring any town we happened to come across; like all teenagers in boring, suburban Pennsylvania. 

Every friend group has “their song.” Every time I heard the lyrics, Take me to your best friend’s house, it was like my friends and I were the only people who existed. It was like we existed for each other. We made each other feel alive through the power of music. 

I used to wonder if I was living or existing.

Throughout middle school, I struggled to find the answer to my question; I struggled to find something that made me feel like I was living. 

The first time I realized I was alive was in seventh grade at a concert − English pop-rock band The 1975. I often joke that it was a religious experience for me, but now looking back on those moments it almost was. I felt alive and that quickly became the only religion that I needed. 

Music has given me a lot of significant and unforgettable moments in my life. It was there for me when I had my first kiss when I was twelve years old in the basement of a party while Modern Baseball’s “Apartment” was playing. It was there for me when I went through my first heartbreak when I was fifteen years old, and I only listened to The Districts’ “Funeral Beds” on repeat. It was there for me every time I was in the back of my friend’s car in junior year of high school and Grouplove’s “Tongue Tied” was “our song.” It was there for me when I needed to feel something. 

There is a difference between living and existing. Existing is simply surviving without feeling the reality of emotions, and with music in my life, I am alive. 

Everything you just read was that same college essay I had written for my 11th grade English class (well, parts of it). I ended up submitting it to each and every college I applied for. Temple University, West Chester, Penn State – you get the idea. 

I often feel like the same person who wrote that college essay, forever frozen in time as a 17-year-old girl. I used to wonder if it was arrested development, when trauma impairs your ability to develop your emotional maturity, and the COVID-19 pandemic led to this devastating reaction. 

I’m 22 and I still can’t drive. Though I have different friends than I wrote about in my college essay, I still sit in the backseat of any car I’m in, and I still listen to Modern Baseball, The Districts, and Grouplove. 

But I don’t go to concerts anymore (or nearly as often as I used to). I’m not jobless anymore like I was when I was 17. I don’t talk to the same people anymore and I live in a different city. I have roommates and a partner whom I wish to marry one day. I’m about to graduate from college. 

I thought I found the answer to my question on whether I was living or existing, but somehow, I am back to square one. Taylor Swift once said, How can a person know everything at 18 and nothing at 22?

Music was my life, but now my life is so much greater and grander than just music. And although graduation is right around the corner, I am excited for what comes after − even if I don’t know as much as I did when I was 17.