Class of 2016. We are holding our breath for the end of this month, when we will turn our tassels and revel in the feeling of being free from high school. If you are anything like me, that last sentence made you excited, because you are absolutely itching to be done with high school. You are ready to move on to something new, something interesting, something that will change the course of your young-adult life forever. These dreams of a fresh start after high school are wonderful, and in many ways they can come true. But until I committed to my dream school just recently, I had not been able to truly see past the exciting part of college to dwell on the drastic changes that are up ahead. I am sure that many of you almost-high-school graduates feel the same way.
Senior year is filled with so many things. The expectation to be fully involved in your school while also being fully immersed in college searches and scholarship applications is simply overwhelming. The entire year is spent weighing the odds of one college against another. We obsess over meal plans, orientation, and how we are going to decorate our dorm room. While the knowledge of graduating and going to college is very present for the entire year, it takes some time for it to become real. For me, it did not become real until the day that I payed my deposit and decided one hundred percent where I am going to be this fall.
The realness of that decision brought with it some very abrupt realizations. The largest one being that wow...I am moving. As someone who has always lived in the same house with the same neighbors and close knit social circles, this realization hit me hard. It is still hitting me hard, whacking me across the head, dragging me through the mud, and knocking me out. The thought of moving is a difficult one to swallow at any stage of life, but up until this point, if you have moved, your family has always been with you. For all of the high school seniors, this time is different. Our families and the friends we have had for our entire lives won't all pack up and move with us.
This transition is going to be incredibly hard. This truth is not very kind to the fragile emotions of high school seniors, who are about to completely have their lives turned upside down. That is because sometimes things are just hard to handle. Writing this is as much an exercise of processing my own thoughts as it is for you to process yours.
The truth is though, that sometimes we have to work through things that are not fun. We have to work through the not fun things to get to the really amazing things. Yes, graduation will be bittersweet, yes the last summer before college will be full of mixed emotions, and yes the first couple months of college will be filled with fear. But something really great is going to come out of it. The people we are terribly sad to leave behind cannot be replaced. We shouldn't try to replace our dearest friends and family members, but there are others like them. Wherever you are going, do not convince yourself that it cannot be like home in some ways. People who feel like home are everywhere, if you look in the right places. For many of us, college is going to be a time when our interests will expand and blossom. We will find people who feel like home, but we will also meet people we would never have come in contact with before. We will spend sleepless nights stressed out and overwhelmed, we will question our decision to move away.
Ultimately though, this experience is going to be incredibly rewarding. Yes change is scary, but is that not the point? It is time to do something different. We are not created to stay in the same places, doing the same things, from the time we are born to the end of our lives. We grow best when we expand our horizons. That might mean moving away and living with a roommate you have never met, or it could mean going to a nearby college and learning to experience your community in a whole new way. Whatever the case may be, we are primed for a time of learning and growth. Cowering behind the scenes because change intimidates us is no way to live out the next month before we graduate, much less the four years ahead of us. So look this change in the face and dive headlong into whatever adventure God has planned for you.
