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“Don’t graduate; you’ll hate it,” was a warning I received from a well-meaning alumna during my senior year. But eight months post-graduation, I can report that I am thriving in a way I did not expect.

Fear of graduation is in the air during senior spring, and rightly so. There are many things to mourn when your four years are up: the bond with your housemates, hours spent in transformative classes, or knowing someone everywhere you go on campus. After graduation, however, you have the opportunity to multiply the gifts you received at Hillsdale by giving them to others. Dying to yourself is the key to loving life after Hillsdale.

College is an inherently self-oriented time, and that is a good thing. Your meals are made for you. Your dorm is cleaned for you. Academic experts work grueling hours for you. Practical needs are handled so that you, the student, can focus on your intellectual, moral, and spiritual development. You don’t even need to go far outside of yourself to find this formation: Opportunities are pouring into your inbox. If we take the maxim “you can’t give what you don’t have” at its word, then college is a time when you build up wisdom, strength, and talents so that you have something to give. 

Graduation signals that you have something you did not four years ago, and that it’s time to start giving it away. No longer an insecure and ignorant 18 year old, a Hillsdale graduate is (hopefully) confident in the knowledge they have gained and yet possesses the humility to see what they do not know. The new battle is against the undisciplined parts of yourself that keep you from serving those you work, live, and pray with. 

At 7:30 a.m. every morning, I face a classroom of 24 middle schoolers. When I manage my time poorly, I am unprepared for class. In college, this might lead you to lose a participation point. But in teaching, my lack of preparation is reflected back to me in the faces of students who do not understand fractions. If I don’t get enough sleep, my patience for sixth-grade antics is short — very short. 

When my life is in order, I can attend to my students as they deserve. They have asked: “Can we keep reading this book?” They’ve translated hundreds of lines of Latin. And some strugglers have gone from D-minus to B.

I can’t say that I have nothing to give anymore because of my time at Hillsdale. Receiving C’s on my papers forced me to search for self-confidence away from academics. Jane Austen’s “Emma” taught me to tell the truth in all things. Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” gave me an ineffable account of the divine. What holds me back now is my desire to sleep in, avoid confrontation, and watch YouTube shorts on cooking. So I am happy to shed the comforts of my off-campus house for the reality of the classroom. It shows me who my time at Hillsdale was for: others.

Do not fear graduation. Search for a job that requires you to die to yourself, in whatever field you feel called. We spend four years at Hillsdale receiving gifts. Happiness lies in giving them away.

Madeline Scheve ’25 is a sixth-grade teacher at Cincinnati Classical Academy, a Hillsdale College Member School.