REFLECTION

This bucket list originated because I am a senior. As I stared at my fall calendar and prepared to start my last year at the University of Michigan, I had a realization: This is it. You get one more year, Elizabeth. Make it count.

Senior year is already hard enough. There is the anxiety and fear about what comes next in your life. More school? A job? Travel? The questions from family, friends, and strangers are endless. And I didn’t have answers to these questions. As someone who struggles to relinquish control and “go with the flow” (especially about major life decisions), I was (and am) panicking, despite knowing it will all work out.

But more than a fear of knowing what comes next in my life, there is a fear of leaving the home I have made in Ann Arbor. These friends have become family. I know the city like the back of my hand. And more than any other place or time in my life, I have truly felt a sense of “growing up” here, in Ann Arbor. So to know it’s ending in eight short months is jarring to say the least. The bucket list seemed like a way to ensure I made the most of my time on campus. I could complete the things I wanted to do before that looming graduation date in May. I felt that a tangible list would force me to do these things that were considered “essential” to the Michigan or Ann Arbor experience. Then, I would feel less anxiety about graduation. The bucket list was a way to “say goodbye” to college.

This was the idea in theory. In reality, what I’ve gained from completing some of my bucket list is very different. Although I enjoyed learning about the various list items and experiencing them, it was never really about the individual events at all.

The bucket list was an excuse, an excuse to gather my friends and make more memories. “Can you guys go to the hockey game on Friday? I need to do it for my bucket list.” That may be what I texted my friends, but it just as easily could have said, “I want to make more memories with you guys. I want to hold on to each other for as long as possible before we have to leave. We can do anything, go anywhere. How about the hockey game?”

The bucket list became the easiest way to rally my friends together.

I can tell you now, writing in December of my senior year, I’ve noticed my friends and I spend a lot of time reminiscing about the past three years. (Maybe because it's easier to talk about than focusing on what's around the corner?) We’ve become masters of nostalgia. We can spend hours telling stories: the funny, the embarrassing, and the painful. We will tell the same stories to each other that someone relayed a week or so prior to the same group. No one seems to care. We go through old Facebook photos, find buried notes on our computers, and listen to songs we heard during freshman tailgates and sophomore summer. This idea of nostalgia has fascinated me.

Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for the past, but it hasn’t always been defined so daintily. In my research, I’ve learned that during the 17th century, nostalgia was originally considered a disorder that plagued soldiers who longed to return home during battle. In the 19th and 20th centuries, that definition changed to a melancholy belonging to immigrants. It wasn’t until more recent scientists started to study nostalgia that they realized it was experienced around the world.

A 2013 New York Times article about recent research into nostalgia said this: “Nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety. It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories. On cold days, or in cold rooms, people use nostalgia to literally feel warmer.” Not bad, huh?

That article also talks about nostalgia as a way to “make life seem more meaningful and death less frightening.” Substitute “death” with “graduation” and you’ve altered the benefits of nostalgia for college students.

Dr. Clay Routledge says nostalgia “brings to mind cherished experiences that assure us we are valued people who have meaningful lives.” Psychologist Erica Hepper has found nostalgia to be higher among young adults than other age groups.

These attributes of nostalgia allow me to understand why my friends and I tell so many stories. We are reaching to the past to protect our future, assuring ourselves everything will be okay. Even the painful memories can be comforting because at least those feelings and experiences are familiar, unlike the lives we’ll lead after graduation.

The bucket list became a way to make more memories, so we can continue to tell stories and be nostalgic about our past. I was able to keep my friends closer than usual by running around Ann Arbor completing a crazy list, and you better believe I won’t stop until we are handed our diplomas.

I know that some of these friends I will have forever, and I have a feeling that as life continues to be uncertain (and sometimes scary), we will reach behind us to these memories to laugh and remember that everything will indeed be okay. We enjoy the sentimental feelings of the past too much to leave them behind.