I have a fair number of friends graduating this year, and they have some of the same fears I did when I graduated. As a warning, before you continue reading, I must say that this article will not calm your fears or your nerves about life on the other side of high school. This article is not meant to make you feel better, but is instead meant to make you think.

There are so many articles and social media posts and more about how to survive after high school, especially on how to keep your high school friends. I’m here to tell you that your fears of losing your best friends in high school are completely valid. Unless you and your best friends have the same plans after high school, it is unlikely that you will continue to be as close as you are now. It is also unlikely that you know exactly what you want to do in college. Almost every single one of my friends in college, myself included, changed their majors and/or minors. Sometimes it was drastic, like a shift from a medical career to a major in the humanities, or simply the addition of an unexpected minor.

I’m also here to say that these things are okay.

It’s perfectly okay to leave some friends behind in high school. I did, and while I miss them, I also think that I’m better off without some of them. If you move away for college, you have to decide which relationships from home you want to continue to put effort into. I only have one friendship from high school that I still actively put effort into, and no significant other from high school. This was a good balance for me with my new college friends, but you may choose to use your energy to keep more of your relationships active in college.

It will hurt to find that there are people you used to talk to everyday that you only talk to maybe once a month in college. It’s okay for that to hurt. You have to remember that not every person you meet is meant to walk with you through your entire life, but it’s still okay for you to miss them when they’re gone.

You will find out that you like things you didn’t know you liked. Often, high schools are limited in what kinds of extracurricular activities are offered to students, so the overwhelming amount of clubs, intramural sports, and other activities can be an eye-opening experience for new college students. It can be really hard thinking you love doing this one thing, but finding out that what you really like is something very different. Just speaking for myself, my first year of college came with a change in majors from the sciences and pre-med to the humanities and politics and government. Almost all of my friends either changed majors and life plans or added minors to help them specialize their interests.

It can be really hard to learn that you’re not quite the person you thought you were. I defined myself for four years of high school by my dream to be a doctor, and finding that I hated science and I wanted to do something else was a hard blow to take. It’s so difficult to learn that you may not be quite the person you thought you were, but this is also perfectly okay. College can be a huge learning experience, not just academically, but also personally. That is, if you let it. You can learn so much about yourself and what you love in college, but you have to open yourself up to new experiences.

While I don’t think this will have done anything to ease your fears about life after high school, I do hope that it makes you feel more comfortable with making changes in your future. Our lives aren’t meant to be lived on autopilot. We aren’t supposed to move through our lives, reliving the same things with the same people for 80 years. Don’t be afraid of change as you leave high school, but know what you want to keep as you move forward.