Marina Keegan Had it Right

I’m a senior in college. I’m terrified.

Maybe terrified is the wrong word, but that is what continually comes to mind when I think of the future. I know it will all be ok. I’ll probably get a job I like, I won’t be living on the streets and hey, maybe I’ll become rich and famous. I think what I am more worried about, however, is not necessarily not being able to gain more out of life, but losing what I have now. I like it here, ya know? I like my friends; I like living with six other girls who are willing to make a midnight target run; I like all the crazy-exhausting group texts and I’ll admit to liking the feeling of being terrified, or rather, the anticipation of what is to come. I don’t want to lose the excitement of possibilities. This has been weighing heavy on me with the ever-approaching graduation date. And I assume most other seniors are starting to find this same fear.

So, when I read Marina Keegan’s “The Opposite of Loneliness,” I felt a bit more understood. Keegan was an amazing writer and talented Yale graduate, class of 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. She wrote this piece for a special edition of the News distributed at the class of 2012’s commencement exercises. Keegan died in a car accident five days after graduation. She was 22.