Remember when we all left for college?

Remember the bittersweet, staged, Instagram picture you posted saying goodbye to your high school friend group. The social foundation of your entire life slipped from under your feet in one quick summer.

Then came learning how to stand again, on a new foundation, that you took pride in building during the last four years. Maybe you transferred, so you had to build that foundation more than once.

Maybe you went to your dream school.

Maybe you met the love of your life. Maybe you met the love of your life and then broke up with him after he cheated on you, with a girl, at a frat party. That day you learned to not be taken advantage of.

The next morning you went to class and learned that you hated accounting but loved entrepreneurship. Perhaps you learned that you hated group projects but loved public speaking. You learned that your body can definitely take two nights of partying in a row, but three is pushing it.

You learned that you missed your parents, way more than you thought you would.

You learned that majoring in theater was something people judged you silently for, but found security in your passion for the craft.

In college, you surprised yourself by learning leadership is something you are great at. You also learned that being president of your sorority was one of the hardest roles you’ve ever taken, but looked absolutely fabulous and unwavering while doing it.

You learned how to eat ramen with sriracha sauce for dinner.

Choosing to be a student athlete allowed you to post impressive pictures on Instagram for your friends back home to see, but you wondered if the 6am practice was worth skipping your friend’s birthday dinner. Then you ran for the first time, at a track meet, there you learned success requires sacrifice.

You learned how to write an essay, the morning of a class, with exactly sixteen minutes and five seconds to deliver it (that includes a trip to the printer).

In college, you gained a friend that understood everything you wanted out of life and guided you towards that. She also let you borrow her clothes and instilled in you the belief that even though he wasn’t interested, you are more worth it than you ever knew.

College taught you many things; about your major, about yourself, about love and friendship and failure and perseverance and about trying something new.

Now, you are graduating.

Taking with you lessons that reach further than textbooks and people that you’ll know after you walk across a stage and hold an earned diploma.

To the marvelous times, to the hard times, to the times when we couldn’t cook, to when we kissed a stranger on the street, in the middle of the night, by a food truck. To the parties we skipped because we truly cared about the thousands of dollars this was costing our parents (or us). To the parties we went to because we truly cared about living in the moment we were given. To the love we shared and the hearts we broke.

To the moonlight that lit every single college campus across the country, paving the way for a temporary bliss. A bliss that you are given for a small number of years. These years don’t define you, not all of you. They define a moment, an important time for your education.

It is the culmination of spending more than twelve years in classrooms. A conclusion.

An experience, a time, a moment, a place.

To it, I say thank you. For allowing me to understand myself a little better than I did when I first got here. An eighteen year old, longing to achieve goals and promises she set out for herself. I leave a twenty-two year old, with a lot of failure behind me but that failure is matched by a lot of success. Each step taken forward and backward has taught me that I’ll never stop learning.

I move on to what they call the school of life. With me, I take what I was taught on a campus, in a building, at a desk.

I take with me confidence in knowledge. I know that accounting makes the world work. I know that when a boy who adores you offers you ice cream, you say yes. I know that when you want to do something, it’s simple -- you do it. I know that saying no is important. I know you can plan as much as you want, but life is that friend who walks into a party and says, “I like to change things up.”

I posted another picture on my Instagram, four years later, saying goodbye to my college friends. Our entire foundation slipping from under our feet after one quick semester.

The lesson that stands out to me the most is understanding that not knowing what foundation I’ll stand on next may be the most beautiful part of it of all.