It’s that time of year—spring is springing and so is your summer holiday spirit. Thinking about all the fun things you’re going to do over the summer break brings you to a teensy-weensy realisation: you’re graduating. This is no longer a summer break for you, it’s much longer. It’s forever.

Here are the six emotions you will feel in the coming weeks.

Shock

Ooooooh boy. Someone just mentioned that there’s only a few weeks left and the lecturer is talking to you about next steps. You feel stuck down to the plastic seat in the lecture hall and for once it feels comfortable, like it’s been moulded specially for your bum, or maybe you have moulded it over the years.

You realise that this is the end of your degree. You can’t believe it.

Denial

Honestly, you shouldn’t be allowed to graduate yet. No no, you’re not ready. You haven’t taken in every opportunity the uni has to offer and didn’t take advantage of all the free sausage sizzles. Maybe this is a weird joke. Hahaha, what a joke.

They don’t actually expect you to now go and get a job and start your adult life. Yeah, OK, good one guys!

Where is the next set of readings (that you probs won’t do)? Anyway you can’t leave because the obscure club/society you’re part of won’t be able to continue without you. No, you’ll find a way to prolong your degree.

Anger

Wait a minute—is this really all the uni has to offer?! You start to feel your blood rising.

Your degree can’t be over—you’re not a genius in your field yet. You don’t have all the necessary information to go forth into the world and conquer. You feel ripped off.

The university’s slick advertising clearly promised that you would leave feeling confident and have great ideas and opinions. Your ideas are mediocre at best. You demand you good ideas.

Bargaining

You start to seriously consider failing some of your end-of-year assessments so you can come back for another semester. That wouldn’t be so bad, right?

You have some friends in the cohort below yours so you wouldn’t be lonely. And it might even be beneficial to redo some classes so all that handy information really lodges itself in your brain.

Besides, you really do have a good feeling that next year is the year you’re finally going to get that part-time job at the uni library and you can’t work there if you’re not a student.

Depression

The degree you have dedicated the last couple of years of your life to is about to be over and everything is wrong. You will no longer have fun conversations in class and dream about good-looking tutors.

You will no longer be a concession and will have to pay full-price for stuff. No one is going to hire you. These were the best years of your life and now they are over. You’ve passed your prime and you didn’t even realise it was happening.

Acceptance

You remember your degree wasn’t an end-goal but a next step to the awesome life you’re going to lead. Everyone else around you is in the same, scary situation. We’re all going to graduate and leave the campus and try our hand at adult life.

This could be really exciting. You loved your degree, learning and meeting new people but now it’s time to really challenge yourself and learn from real-world experiences. It’s going to be okay.

No, it’s going to be more than okay—it’s going to be great.

Iryna is a creative woman living it up in Melbourne. She is studying her Masters of Writing and Publishing at RMIT. When she’s not smoothing out her internal overreactions with tea, you can find her passionately discussing pop culture.

(Lead image: Arrested Development/FOX)