I never thought I’d see the day where I would become a “super senior.” In addition to the 13 consecutive years of schooling from preschool to 12th grade, I am starting my 11th semester of college. Oh god, 11th? Putting it into writing makes it sound way more tragic than I thought. Withhold your judgment. How many semesters have you taken? Huh? I’m looking at you, 40-year-old in my “Principles of Media Studies” class. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

“Super senior,” while the name sounds a lot more glamorous than it is, there are little-to-no actual perks that come along with the title.  There are no sparkly shirts, no uniform, no scepter and no parade of accomplishment .

You graduate after all your friends do, you get to see freshmen running around school and wonder if perhaps there was a jailbreak at the local elementary school and, my personal favorite, you get to be stuck in a classroom filled with people that take three full hour-and-45-minute class periods just to finish asking questions about the details of the syllabus. I mean, what part of “the final is not cumulative” don’t you understand?

The only upside I can even fathom is that after getting to know the campus pretty well, you learn some things. You learn that there are better and worse times to visit Olive Oil organic Cafe for a $9 grilled cheese (better times being approximately 30 total minutes through the day where there isn’t a line; worse times being the remaining 23 1/2 where the line wraps around into the depressingly small U.S. Bank line). You learn that scheduling late classes is almost pointless, since you have to get to school by 8 a.m. to get a parking spot (or you wise up during your last semester and finally decide to take advantage of the gorgeously mod-looking trolley station on one side of campus and stroll on the scene at noon without having to stalk departing students to steal their parking spots). You learn that if you have a class in College Square it is so far out of the way from everything that the class is worth dropping until you can take it in a more ideal location. You learn to avoid the entire upper part of campus during rush week. You learn that even though the farmers market is super cool, that bringing cash is the only way to enjoy pad thai. You learn that San Diego really does have the best weather, and even if you think it’s going to rain one day, you should just wear a light hoodie because you’re going to end up being responsible for your umbrella all day, and it becomes a hassle.  You learn that picking up The Koala is the biggest mistake you’ll make all day because it really just infuriates you to no end that this kind of thing actually exists (but you still totally respect it and think it’s a legitimate newspaper because you’re afraid you’ll end up as part of its jokes and you’re really just way too sensitive to even handle anything like that).  You learn that no matter how long you’ve watched it being built, the new Aztec Student Union will never get finished. You learn that the bookstore is a magical fairy land in which you can get lost for hours in a sea of sweatpants and ballpoint pens. You learn that no matter how many sporting events you tell yourself you’re going to go to, you still end up going to zero. You learn that the Aztec Recreation Center is no place for amateurs, only fully made-up sorority girls and meatheads. You learn that no matter how far away you moved from home, you will still run into someone from high school even though you moved to San Diego first and this is your town, not theirs.

Then you slowly start to realize that you’ve experienced your (hopefully) last first day of school. You start to realize that you’re going to miss all the things you spent 11 semesters complaining about. You realize your parents aren’t going to help you out financially once you graduate. You realize that you’re going to have to get a real job and probably work somewhere you hate for a while just to get where you want to be. You realize that it was all really easy to whine about, but school is going to soon be a thing of the past.

But don’t worry, because I’m sure the majority of you reading this aren’t anywhere near your “super senior” status, and most of you probably won’t even see it in your lifetime. It’s a tough position. It’s a daily struggle. But between elementary, middle and high school, community college, and a university, it’s all just something funny you can talk about in the book you write someday later on.