I'm moving to Australia

Senior year spring semester. What a time to be alive.

Campus is buzzing. There's something completely different about how people interact, how they approach classes, how they start “checking off the bucket list.”

Daily routines turn into last times. Blue cups replace water.?Attendance feels increasingly more optional.?

These bittersweet, exciting moments are also plagued with an undercurrent of anxiety — an overwhelming feeling of impending despair.

Basically, seniors are straight up losing their shit.

People are applying for hundreds of jobs and hearing back from two — albeit both are rejection letters.?

Seniors are choosing where to place their roots; which cities sound intriguing, what post-grad programs to attend, which ring to propose to their partner with.

Seniors are choosing how to navigate life outside of the perfect little, quintessential Chapel Hill bubble. The exact bubble that fostered incredible self-growth yet isolated us from the truth of the big, bad real world.?

Anyway, everyone go ahead and flip your shit.?

I’m moving to Australia.?

Friday, March 3.?

I woke up at 5 a.m. feeling wired.

Side note — this isn't out of the ordinary for me. I love waking up at the crack of dawn (and going to bed by 9 p.m.)... pretty sure someone hijacked my internal clock and programmed me to be a 70-year-old grandma.

After telling my friends and family for weeks that following graduation I was going to move out of the country, I finally decided to apply for a visa – and 5 a.m. on a random Friday morning seemed like the perfect time to get the ball rolling.?

An internet search, one desperate phone call to my mom begging for a photocopy of my high school diploma and 350 bucks later, my Australian visa application was submitted.

By 10:30 a.m., the visa was granted.

Well, I guess it’s happening.

I have no job lined up. I have no city to place roots in. I have no grad school plans. No way in hell there will be a ring on my finger.?

But I do have an Australian Work and Holiday (subclass 462) visa. I’m set for life!?xD (Technically speaking... 12 months)

So, if anyone knows what Vegemite tastes like or how to befriend kangaroos, plz hit my line.?