In each installment of “Senior Scaries,” Erin Ye ’26 confronts her senior-year fears in her final three quarters at Stanford. You’ll hear about the triumphs and tribulations of tackling the Senior Bucket List™, and hopefully feel less alone in the never-ending soul search that comes with growing up.

Whenever someone tells me that they’ve read one of my articles in The Daily, I am always, without fail, extremely embarrassed. Even worse is when they remember and repeat something specific I said; the discomfort practically eats me alive. I know that when I publish a piece, I am consenting to having it read by anyone on the internet, and particularly people who receive The Daily’s newsletter. Still, I can’t help how I feel: you read what I wrote, you now know how I think.

I joined The Daily during my freshman fall, initially as a copy editor, because I was too scared to pick up any pitches in the never-ending Slack channels. Eventually, I mustered up the courage to write my first piece that February, the start of a Grind column titled ‘Nonanswers,’ which focused on questions I found impossible to resolve. The piece is about believing in soulmates, and you can read it if you want to, though I’ll say I didn’t have any authority on that topic then, nor do I now. If you were to ask me if I believe in soulmates today, I would still say, “Maybe,” with the hedge that if they do exist, I’m sure that many of mine have spent time with me in the Daily House.

I had the idea last May to write a column called ‘Senior Scaries.’ My junior spring was cut short by my summer internship, which meant that I was taking online finals from an apartment in New York City while my friends were still on campus drinking Coupa smoothies at Meyer Green. It occurred to me then how much I loved Stanford, how badly I was going to miss it after graduation and how my senior year was going to fly by. How could I have been foolish enough to love something so obviously finite? How was I going to survive the heartbreak of leaving? ‘Senior Scaries’ was my love letter to everything I feared and felt during the final countdown to commencement.

And so I wrote about (my lack of) dating at Stanford, taking a road trip to Oregon and the pressure to change the world. I talked about the fear of losing contact with friends, the impossible expectation of a perfect senior spring and the feeling of finally being ready to graduate. After three volumes of being a Managing Editor, it was nice to be a writer again. The column was both a way to stay grounded in the moment and assurance that I would have a record of these times for future reminiscence. And still, I feel like there was more I didn’t get to say.

Usually, right after I publish a piece in The Daily, I realize that I forgot to include something in the article. There was an unfinished thought on the topic, a sentence I had meant to edit but didn’t get around to. Usually, I tell myself that I’ll do better for my next installment and make sure that it’s perfect before I send it out. But this is my last installment, and after four years of trying in every dimension, I have finally accepted that perfection is an impossible enemy. So I’ll just say this.

My Stanford was not perfect. It was busy and loud and sleep-deprived. It was filled with feelings of inadequacy and falling behind. It was riddled with insecurities and unanswered questions and ideas that fell to the wayside. It made me feel exceptionally average, if not vastly below. There were countless times that I was the least interesting and most anxious person in the room, and it still feels to me like I am graduating with regrets for some of the things I did and didn’t do.

At the same time, my Stanford was beautiful and active and filled with moments that made me want to write about them. It was spacious and sunny and hopeful, reverberating with laughter and surprises and grateful disbelief. It was quiet and peaceful and filled with understanding silence and friends who are forgiving and people who show up. I’ll never fully understand how I got to go here in the first place or how I ended up with the support system that I did once I got here. I am almost embarrassed to have been so lucky. But, as evidenced here, embarrassment is no excuse to stop going.

I often say that if I could get another four years of undergrad, I might have chosen a wildly different major, joined entirely different clubs and ended up in a vastly different, but equally happy future. That is maybe the most beautiful thing about Stanford and the scariest thing about the world: there is no one to tell you what you should and should not do, and it is completely up to you to take the leap.

One thing that I am sure of is that if I could get another four years of undergrad, I would choose to write for The Daily again and again and again. Not just for the coziest building on campus and its magical couches that saved me many times when I needed to take a nap between classes. Not just because The Daily brought me Greta, Ananya and Eliza, who are the hardest working, most competent, kindest, warmest friends in the world. But because even though I will never not be awkward when someone tells me they’ve read my article, I will also never not be grateful that I got to share my Stanford with so many people, that my words meant something to some of them. Thanks to The Daily, my luck is overflowing, and I’m glad these pages serve to hold it.

If you’ve read this far, I hope some of what I said made sense. If you tell me that you’ve read this far, I’ll probably cry. You now know how I think.