I will be finishing my first year of college in a few short weeks, but every time I pass my bookshelf and notice my graduation tassel hanging on the corner of my four-inch-thick literature textbook, my heart still skips a beat.
I can remember almost every hour which passed that day like it happened last week. I remember the smell of hairspray in the bathroom as all of us girls frantically tried to smooth and bobby pin our hair under the caps. I remember waiting in line behind the auditorium door and taking my first wobbly steps into the aisle. I remember looking out from on stage into the sea of people and seeing my smiling family sitting a few rows away. I remember watching the slideshow of pictures summarizing 18 years of my life within 10 brief seconds, telling myself that it cannot be real, that this cannot be happening yet.
Where on earth has the time gone?
I’m sure you can identify with this feeling by now. I see it in your Facebook posts, your selfies before your senior photo shoots, your college acceptance videos and the wild, overwhelmed look in your eyes when you talk about homework and extracurriculars and teachers and GPAs and financial aid. I get it. Senioritis is the real deal.
No, scratch that. Life is the real deal.
While it’s hard to even grasp the fact that the door to your childhood is closing fast – I mean really fast – and you still don’t know exactly how you ended up where you are or how you’re going to make it to where you want to be next, the advice I most want to give you at this point in time is to slow down. I mean it. Slow. Down.
Because as much as you have probably heard it before, I think you need to hear it again; you only get to do this once. You graduate from high school once out of the 80-something years that people tend to get out of this life, and if you miss it, you don’t really get a do-over.
That’s the unfortunate but essential truth about any big milestone in life.
I almost hesitate to call it unfortunate, though, and it’s all because of something that my dad told me the week of my high school graduation – which also happened to be the week of a family crisis, a terrible breakup, and a reevaluation of what I wanted out of my life in the first place. I want to pass it on to you, too.
No matter what’s happening right now, you need to remember that this is a big chapter of your life coming to a close. How you react to this depends on whether or not you realize that another chapter is about to begin.
Embrace this season of change and the possibilities it brings with it. As you transition from the person you were and the life you had in high school to the person you will be and the life you will have only a few months from now – let alone a whole year – remember to savor each point in the process. These smaller moments are what life is made up of.
On behalf of the Class of 2015, I pass the torch on to you.
Finish well.
