Making sense of the midcollege crisis

Something changes in you when you start your junior year of college. It’s hard to pinpoint when it started or where it originated, but you can feel it. There’s a tinge of anxiety and restlessness seeping into conversations with friends, in your classrooms and on your social media timelines. If you’re a newly-minted upperclassman like myself, you might know what I’m talking about. Though we only said our goodbyes to sophomore year four months ago, the transition to the second half of college has left many third-years feeling strange and desperate to hold onto youth while reeling from the fast approach of postgrad life. It seems as if we have a midcollege crisis on our hands. 

I would describe the midcollege crisis as a sudden and heightened shift in mood or behavior caused by the transition to junior year. But this definition is only based on my personal experience, so I interviewed a half dozen third-years to corroborate my observations. 

With much of our lives still ahead of us, I recognize that it sounds ironic to say that a bunch of 20-somethings are undergoing a crisis of lost youth. However, that irony is more a product of societal expectations than anything else; college has been glamorized as the “end goal” for young people, often lauded as “the best four years of our lives.”

This idealization is great for underclassmen looking to embrace the newness of college and discover what university life has to offer, and for seniors who are reminded to enjoy their final year as the “heads” of campus. But as LSA junior Sohum Pavaskar puts it, the motto is a stark reminder that the clock is ticking and time is halfway up.

“Junior year, for many, is the transition from youth to actual adulthood,” Pavaskar said in an interview with The Daily.

Our temporal culture is built around milestones, so it’s no surprise that juniors might feel uncomfortable when sandwiched between getting into college and getting a job. Entering college opens you up to a world of possibilities — new friends and experiences, clubs and organizations to join, an array of classes to take — but the novelty of these opportunities does not wear off when you’re an upperclassman. If anything, you realize just how much is available to you in college and must reflect on what you failed to take advantage of in your first two years. 

The hope is that in the second half of college, upperclassmen can look forward to their fair share of opportunities that await them in the professional world of jobs, internships and postgraduate life. Yet, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that it’s gotten significantly harder for college graduates to find a job. So, with juniors facing a dwindling college experience and a bleak postgrad reality, can you really blame them for not feeling completely OK? 

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone could deny the precarious situation facing third-years. Of course, it’s not just third-years struggling; every student, regardless of their year, has to fight against the transformational nature of challenge and college itself.

Music, Theatre & Dance junior Claire Marquardt believes that the college environment is largely responsible for this. 

“Most students face a crisis at some point in their college career, not necessarily always during the junior year,” Marquardt said. “It’s just because of how different everything is and definitely because of not being at home with your family.”

College is a period of immense change and growth, so it’s natural for uncertainty and stress to take their toll. But to dismiss the midcollege crisis as just another typical college struggle overlooks the unusual feeling of becoming a college upperclassman. LSA junior Alyssa Fan echoes this same philosophy.

“While it felt totally normal to have an open mindset in freshman and sophomore year,” Fan said. “I can’t help but feel a huge shift in my outlook on life.”

When college is no longer something you’re looking forward to, but rather something you’re looking back on, your whole perspective shifts. Your outlook on yourself and your life is no longer just about youth or stress — it’s about your future and what you’ll contribute to the world around you.  

This is a little dramatic, I know. But if you compare a midcollege crisis to a midlife crisis, the weight of it becomes a little more believable. Someone facing a midlife crisis is forced to confront their own mortality and the fact that their lives are half over. They might make rash decisions or alter their behavior in an attempt to cling onto the fleeting remnants of their youth. 

In a similar manner, students facing a midcollege crisis are forced to confront the fact that their undergraduate experience is half over. They might change study areas or friend groups to make up for lost time or, in extreme instances, completely alter their campus identity. What sets the junior class apart from their fellow college students is an incessant need to change, to feel youthful and to ensure that their college experience is complete. 

With one hand grasping the blossoms of youth and the other reaching out to full-fledged adulthood, juniors face a choice: become consumed by the midcollege crisis and let it rule over the next two years, or embrace the fact that college is finite. 

The hard truth is that college won’t last forever and it isn’t meant to. It’s a sandbox for us to play in, where we can build up great sandcastles with our hands and slam them down just the same. By coming to terms with this fact, you can devote your time as an undergraduate to doing as many meaningful activities as you possibly can or. Business junior Tom Cavanaugh puts this change of heart one specific way:

“Make hay while the sun is shining.”

Yes, your time in college slowly fades away, and it can be hard to let go of something that is so impactful but also so limited. But the fact that college is going to end is inevitable. So, if we allow ourselves to seek enjoyment in the finite nature of college, to feel content with our accomplishments and revel in the happy moments, we can overcome the midcollege crisis and everything associated with it. 

Now is there a way to erase the midcollege crisis entirely from the college experience? Probably not, according to Engineering junior Jack Woods.

“It may just be a part of this whole growing up thing,” Woods said.

The unrest that comes with aging is a weight that we all must carry and the midcollege crisis is just one time where that weight increases. 

The solution, in Pavaskar’s eyes, is acceptance: “Accepting that time is always moving, and while it does suck that things come to an end, the future always holds so much and is so exciting. It’s a mindset shift, to enjoy the present and the few years we have in college, but to also be excited for what the future holds.”

Max Feldman is an Opinion Columnist who writes about campus culture and the overlooked issues facing students. He can be reached at maxfeld@umich.edu.

Related articles