As 2016 comes to a close, I have spent much time reflecting on the past year. Some of the biggest milestones in my life have happened this year.

For one thing, I finished out my senior year of high school.

I attended my last ever Friday Night Lights and my last basketball game in the student section of my school gym.

I walked the halls of the school I had spent the four years prior walking every day, for the last time.

All of the little things I took for granted about high school and the comfort and familiarity of going to school with the same people all throughout my schooling career, and the simplicity of it all, suddenly grew more and more apparent in my eyes, as those things were now in the past.

I attended my senior prom, the night everyone looks forward to even before they begin high school, getting to wear the beautiful long dress, hair and makeup done to the nines, and dancing one last night away with all of my friends in celebration of how far we have come, and all we have accomplished.

Then, I graduated. 12 years of assignments, tests, essays, meeting wonderful friends and teachers, all culminated in me walking across that stage, wearing the cap and gown I have waited all my life to wear, a couple of handshakes, and that little piece of paper.

That crazy, drama-filled, kind-of-horrible, yet amazingly fun and wonderful chapter of life that is high school, flipped to the next, revealing one that was a bit intimidating.

After all of the excitement about graduation and the completion of high school died down, I realized the realness of the change that was ravaging through my life, and I embarked on beginning the next biggest milestone of the year and in my life--- college.

I packed up every belonging making up my bedroom into some brown boxes, removing all the visible traces of me living in it. I looked around, playing all of the memories made growing up in that room, like a slideshow through my tear-filled eyes.

I said "see you later" to the friends I was used to seeing day in and day out, that I went to school with, that I lived next to.

I left my home in Mill Creek, the safe little suburb I have spent so many years living in, that I grew up in, and I watched it in the rear-view mirrors as Pullman became the new place I would live. A place very different from where I was used to, isolated from everyone and everything.

My parents dropped me off at Washington State University, leaving me on my own for the first time in my life. No longer did I have them to depend on to do everything for me, or to see every day.

Being responsible for feeding myself, getting where I needed to go, being accountable for doing what I needed to do on my own, doing laundry, it all became solely on me. If I did not do it, it wasn't going to happen.

Living in a dorm, a tiny room comparable to my bedroom, became my "house", which I shared with another person, something I was not used to.

I met amazing new people, ones I know will be in my life for years to come.

No rules, no one telling me what to do, so much newfound freedom and independence in my life came this past year.

I became a version of myself that is happier, more confident, more driven than ever, living to do something solely for me, for the first time.

2016 was a year of my life that I created some of the best memories of my life, the ones that you tell your kids about, and that you never quite forget, or want to, for that matter. With senior year and all of its festivities you wait your whole life for, graduation, going to college, lifestyle changes, living somewhere new, my whole life shifted this last year. Looking back on it, I can't help but smile realizing how far I have come and what I have accomplished these last 12 months. I will remember 2016 forever as a year that changed my life in the most significant ways I have experienced, but that provided me with the most wonderful times, ones I will cherish forever.

Thank you for the best year of my life 2016. I look forward to all that 2017 has headed my way.