Freedom; glorious freedom. Very soon, a flock of NIU seniors will be springing the coup and making a break for the real world with grand delusions of the future and fond memories of the past.

While most NIU graduates can’t wait to ditch this podunk town, some still can’t help but look back at their time at NIU with some sentimentality.

“I’ll miss the friends I see in class every day,” said Ryan Hietpas, a senior OMIS major. “They are the ones that help you get through your final two years. I also love to walk through campus from one end to the other … I think the hardest thing of all, though, will be moving out of an environment I’ve lived in for five years.”

Undoubtedly, the thought of leaving NIU can be a daunting one. After all, students spend a solid 16 years of their lives in one school or another, and graduation marks an end to all of that and an introduction to something completely new. Moving into that new environment can be unnerving for some, but Kathy Hotelling, director of the Counseling and Student Development Center, said finding friends in the work place can make the transition easier by creating a support system outside of the academic world.

“While it may be easy to keep the friends you had in high school [and] college, if you do not move away from the northern Illinois area, it is important to have colleagues in the workplace,” Hotelling said. “After all, you spend a good deal of your time at work. Having support and friendships where you work helps you in your transition in various ways – gaining information, especially informal, about the culture of the workplace and the ‘unwritten rules.’”

Relationships with parents also will be altered by commencement, said Anna Beth Payne, associate director and clinical coordinator of the CSDC.

“[Entering the real world] is also a time when relationships with parents undergo yet another change,” Payne said. “Moving into a more adult relationship with parents can be very rewarding and supportive.”

Senior acting major Justin Mentell has fond memories of loitering with friends.

“There is a fan outside Neptune Central that everyone would gather around to smoke cigarettes,” Mentell said. “That’s just where we’d all hang out together. You could go there at 3 a.m. and there would be people out there. If you couldn’t sleep or something, you can just go there and there are people out there to hang out with.”

All sentimentality aside, there are probably a whole lot of things seniors will never miss … ever. For all the fun and friendship that can be had at NIU, graduating seniors shouldn’t become too hung up on what they are leaving behind.

“We have all heard of ‘perpetual students’ with the implication that these individuals have continued in other programs to avoid the ‘real world,’” Hotelling said. “But the challenges that are faced in moving on are immeasurable as we come in contact with new people, learn new things through these people and our jobs, and come to know ourselves outside of the context of being a student.”

While moving on and out of DeKalb means leaving behind a lot of good things, it also means forever ridding oneself of grade point averages, general education classes, residence halls and, hopefully, perpetual parent support.

“I will never miss gen eds … ever,” Mentell said. “That’s a place where you can meet girls, but, as far as class work is concerned, it’s terrible. The stuff I learned in those classes I just forgot over the summer anyways.”