For all those graduating in the next few weeks it truly is a bitter sweet moment. You’re nervous to step out of your comfort zone yet long to move on to bigger and better things. Thoughts swamp your head as you're handed your diploma, but below are the five things you suddenly realize as you exit the stage.

1. You Suddenly realize how old you are.

High school is split up into two categories: lower and upperclassmen. Despite only holding four grades, the maturity and physical growth over those four years is astronomical. As seniors, you feel on top of the world, the rulers of the school, in which nothing can stand in your way. A long way from the nervous, young freshman wearing too much make up to fit in or the short guy who hasn’t hit his growth spurt yet. But once you have that diploma in your hand you suddenly realize how immature the whole high school system is.

Once you walk across that stage you're no longer a student, you’re an adult. Some of your peers will go to college, some of them with jump right into the work force, and others will start families. No matter what path is taken, everyone is their own person and is no longer a rank in a graduating class. You know longer want to go to the silly “high school parties” and sweet sixteens seem like a silly mile stone. Everyone wants to grow up and move out, so eager to jump into the real world. But the one thing that everyone feels, is despite being a legal adult, you’re the youngest adult in the so-called real world.

2. You’re no longer the big fish in the small pond.

High school is full of clicks and every school has what are considered the “popular kids”, the ones everyone knows but doesn’t necessarily like. Those kid you strive to be. But once you get out of high school and on to the next chapter of your life no one knows you and no one cares. No matter where life takes you, every graduating senior in now the newbie. Either the new one at work or the new freshmen in college.

For those going to college, when you’re standing among an incoming class of 10,000, you realize there is no longer the prettiest girl in school or the most athletic boy. You realize that being friendly and knowing how to make friends of the best quality you can have. At first your best friend is your roommate, but be outgoing, smile at everyone you walk by on campus and don’t be afraid to get involved. There is no better way to miss high school than to sit in your 10 foot by 10 foot room packed with three people and realize you are truly alone.

3. You can be ANYTHING you want to be.

High school is so judgey…jocks, nerds, band geeks, anime lovers, goths, and that group of girls who wear their shorts way too short. You’re no longer restricted to a particular group. In college, with hundreds of clubs, you can be the trumpet playing fraternity brother or the lab rat in fashion club. No one is going to tell you what to be, so why not be everything you want to be? If you want to be a doctor, do it. If you want to cross dress, do it. If you want to start a family, do it.

Don’t let anyone tell you how to live your life. Once you get your diploma the cord is cut and you are free.

4. You forget your high school friends.

Coming from a small school, I knew everyone I graduated with. Two years later I can barely remember those same people's names when I run into them at the grocery store. Everyone’s biggest fear is that they are going to lose their “best friends”. I hate to be the bad guy but this is unavoidable. but this is not a bad thing.

You meet greater people than you ever thought possible; with seven million people in the world, your high school friends will not be the only ones who love you. I’m not saying you will be completely cut off from your hometown but days will turn into months and before you know it who have no clue who your best friend’s new boyfriend is or what outfit they are wearing that day. This also includes that boy you’ve been crushing on or that girl who broke your heart. Nothing says moving on like actually moving away. Don’t fight the new environment, embrace it.

5. Your hometown is no longer your safe place.

Once you’ve adjusted to your new life elsewhere, your old life seems strange. Everything has changed, the people, the high school students, the “popular crowd," yet nothing has. It’s the same little town you’ve always known, yet it no longer knows you. It’s not that it forgot you, it’s that you grew out of it. Nothing feels stranger than when you start referring to college as your home.

Congratulations to the class of 2016. Embrace it, go with the flow, and make the most out of every moment. The best is yet to come.