As many other 18-year-olds and I prepare to head off to our first semester of college, I have read several articles on Odyssey about how they can’t wait for college and how high school was terrible and how they can’t wait to move on. While these are all real emotions that I have felt in the past few months, I feel that it is much more important to recognize the people who we walked through the halls with rather than go on about the building we spent (at the very minimum) 35 hours per week in.

So…

I want to start by thanking the people I was and still am friends with. Some friendships faded away before graduation, some faded this summer, but there are other friendships that I still have and can’t imagine letting go of. There are a wide range of people that I’ve gotten to know and spent time with. Thank you to all of those people for always making me feel a true, genuine and authentic kind of happiness that I only feel when I’m around the people I love. Y’all never fail to make me laugh until I nearly pee my pants and we can always pick up right where we left off no matter how long it’s been. I can honestly look back and say that I am so happy with the people I ended up choosing to spend my time with when graduation rolled around. So whether you went to my church, you were a classmate, you were part of an extracurricular with me, or you were simply in a homecoming/prom group with me, thank you for giving me that happiness that can’t be found anywhere else.

To the people who hurt and disappointed me in high school, thank you for teaching me more life lessons than I can count on two hands. You'd think that I would have no respect for you, but I feel the opposite because of everything I have learned. You’d think that getting hurt by people would make you feel insecure and angry at yourself, and I’ll be honest and say that that was the case for a while, but I am so glad to say now that I graduated loving myself more than I did when I walked into high school. I am now more independent and I’ve grown so much, all because I was hurt. And, probably most importantly, I now know what kinds of friends I do and don’t want to make in college, so thank you for teaching me that. Regardless of if you did or didn’t mean harm, you ended up doing me well.

Finally, to everyone, thank you for leaving some kind of mark in my life. Whether I talked to you once, twice, a million times, or somewhere in between, I got to experience knowing someone new with a different story than the person before. As we go off to different schools, things are clearly going to change. Whether we catch up anytime we’re close to each other or I just become another meaningless like on your Instagram photo, I’ll still appreciate what we had and what you taught me. I wish you nothing but the best as you do whatever you feel called to do. Even though high school is behind us, never forget what life lessons you learned in those four years; they might come in handy.