It's easier said than done.

Everyone is telling you to stop wishing for graduation to come faster or for summer to be over so you can move into your dorm. Yes, this time of your life is exciting, and you are doing your best to make every second count, but it can be a little annoying, everyone constantly telling you to hold onto high school. You don't want to hold on — you want the future to come, with its new places, faces, dining halls, dorm rooms, new friends, and a new campus. It's just so exciting, it can be difficult to relish these last few weeks of being the oldest one in your school.

The last summer before college, you and your high school friends will hang out nonstop, and the topic of college will come up often. You'll wonder what it will be like, the youngest of thousands of students, on your way to the real world. It will be like everything you think, but also nothing like it.

It will be everything you could wish for and more.

The last summer before college, your hometown will still be the biggest place you experience, and the same roads you drive down every day and have for years will still feel natural to you. The restaurants and rival high schools you sit in for lunches, dinners, and basketball games will still be part of your routine. You will spend your days hanging out with the same people you've known for what feels like forever. You won't be constantly texting friends that live in other states, planning to visit each other. You won't know what it feels like to have another city that feels like home and groups of friends that feel like your other family. This last summer, you won't have sat down in your first college class or your first game day. This summer, my only advice is to remember how you feel now, living at home and being with your high school friends on graduation day and everything in between. Take your time driving home, and stay at your friend's houses as long as you can. Remember everything you can, but get excited for what is to come.

What people don't tell you about this last summer before college is that all of the new experiences and people that come with college doesn't just change you, but your hometown.

When you come home to see your family, sleep in your own bed, and eventually clean out your dorm room, say goodbye to your college friends, and move back home, your home feels different. These differences aren't bad things, they are just evidence of how much you have grown your freshman year of college and how bright your future is. The best is truly yet to come, but there's no time like the present.

"Isn't it funny that day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different." - C.S. Lewis