Sitting here on my laptop going through pictures from the past four years, I shed a few tears, laugh a little, take a few screenshots and text my closest friends back home. In high school, I never really realized how much I would miss the familiar faces, sporting events, my parents or school itself. Starting college made me realize that I can't go back and get the "best four years of my life" again. Ed Helms once said, "Don't be afraid of fear. Because it sharpens you, it challenges you, it makes you stronger; and when you run away from fear, you also run away from the opportunity to be your best possible self." I finally realized after I graduated that the experiences I went through were only to make me the person I am today. A strong, loving, caring, sacrificing and daring individual.

If you are still in high school or maybe you only have one semester left, I encourage you to take a step back and evaluate everything that you have going for you. Be grateful for the life long relationships you've made in high school. Don't be afraid to call up that boy you have been crushing on since elementary school. He isn't getting any younger and neither are you. Skip a class or two while you can because in college you'll never be able to unless you want to miss out on everything in one class period of fifty minutes. Go out on random adventures with your friends. Stay in on a few weekends to spend time with your family, because they won't always bee there forever.

Before you know it, it's going to be your last semester of high school and you're going to be thinking where the time has gone. Graduation invitations are going out and parties are going by in a blur. Money and cards come in the mail from family and friends that you don't even know or are close to. Your parents start shedding tears and you begin realizing that high school is finally over. You're trying to find a job or internship before college starts up in the fall or you're trying to find a 9-5 job for the rest of your life. You and your friends begin planning vacations of a lifetime to tropical escapes to enjoy yourself before you never see them again. You begin to wonder what you're going to do without your parents. How are you going to wake up before school? How are you going to wash your clothes?

Fast forward and it's almost time for orientation. Dorm shopping begins and learning how to wash your clothes seems impossible. If you're a collegiate athlete, pre-season is starting up and that summer workout you put off is kicking you in the butt. You begin signing up for orientation and classes and meeting your roommate for the first time. Next thing you know, your first weeks of classes go by, and you're missing home for the first time. A few more weeks go by and you begin to miss everything about high school and what your friends are doing. Those high school friends you use to do everything with are broadening their horizons too and meeting new people. Time seems to get the best of you and there's never really any time to see them.

Most importantly, you begin to realize that you are out on your own now for the very first time, and most of you won't know what to do. You won't have your mom and dad down the hall from you. Instead, they are going to be a phone call away. You may end up a few miles, a couple hundred miles or a few thousand miles away from home. Whether you're down the road or a flight away, the feeling will still be the same. You may come home the first few months, but eventually you will only come home for holidays or birthdays. Home won't feel like "home" anymore. It will, instead, feel like the shell of your childhood and the past. You will begin to feel like a stranger in your own home.

Your family will laugh and talk about past events in the week, and you will sit there and not know how to respond. Don't take these next few months for granted, because soon you will wish for it all over again. Trust me, I know. Enjoy the time you have left before you go off and leave them behind, "Don't be yourself. Be all of yourself. Don't just live. Be that other thing connected to death. Be life. Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it and have fun."