Class of 2016,

Congratulations. You made it. Graduating from high school is quite the milestone in your young adult life. It marks a turning point, a transition from your years as an immature, clueless teenager to a mature, clueless young adult. As you embark on your journey into self-discovery, take a moment to look back and reflect on how far you have come and how you have done it. Think about the people around you—from your closest family members, friends, and teachers, to your classmates who you may have not had the opportunity to know. Think about your ups and downs, your highs and your lows, your mistakes and the lessons that you learned from them, your successes and your failures. Finally, think about you—think about how all of these people and all of these events shaped you into becoming the person you are today. In order to lead a successful life beyond high school, you must first understand what led you to success in high school. You must be able to discern who encouraged you and who supported you from those who only pretended to. You must be able to discern not only what went wrong, but why it went wrong, and how you can avoid making the same mistakes again. You must become an independent and cognizant young adult.

The challenge of high school was one that was probably the biggest of your life so far, but the challenges have only begun. Some of your friends will be going off somewhere else, somewhere away from you, and you must decide soon if these friends are worth keeping. The challenge that comes with being a young adult is needing to make every one of your decisions on your own. Nobody else can decide for you who to keep in touch with, how to organize yourself, or what made you successful; nobody knows you better than you know yourself. You are the sole judge of what you can and cannot handle, and you are the key to your own future success.

As you have reached the end of your high school journey, you will now take the next step into a new one, one that is different from that of your peers. Some are enrolling at a four-year university, others at a two-year community college, still others at a trade school, while others are entering the workforce directly, and others are entering into the military. The possibilities are endless, but your four years in high school and your education before that—along with those who have been with you every step of the way—have prepared you for this monumental moment in your life. Your entire life has prepared you to make perhaps the biggest decision of your life thus far: what to do next. Whatever you choose, you can always look back on your high school experience for guidance, wisdom, understanding and learning, whether it is how to study for a class, or even how to be yourself. As much as you have learned in high school, there is nobody that you learned more about than yourself.

High school graduation is a time for celebration; it is a time to thank family, friends, teachers, and peers for being a part of your journey; it is a time for reflection, for looking back at your high school experience and smiling; lastly, it is a time to pause—a time to simultaneously recall your past, enjoy the present, and perhaps most importantly, a time to look forward to the future. It should be viewed as a stepping stone and an opportunity to create even more memories with the people who have helped you along the way. Congratulations, class of 2016.