To the Class of 2016,

Congratulations! You did it! You finally graduated from High School, after 4 long years. I remember being in the same spot as you are in now, graduated and ready for the summer. In my experience, senior year was about who was going where, how far apart you and your best friend would be, who else was going with you to school and so on. Everyone says being a senior is the best, and looking back, for me it was great. I didn’t want it to end. Senior year was one of the best years for me, but what I am here to do is prepare you for the summer. Something I wish someone was able to do for me.

You graduated, now what? Now it’s time for your regularly scheduled summer activities such as pool parties, BBQs, late nights and beach trips. It will feel like all of the summers before, you will laugh and smile all night with your best friends. Except this summer will be different, you won’t know it at first but as those college countdowns creep closer to single digits and eventually hit zero, you will realize how different of a summer it is. Those college countdowns don’t make the summer go any slower, but instead make it fly by. Your 2016 summer will fly by. Today, you sit at graduation, tomorrow, you move into your dorm room. You won’t even know what hit you. It will feel like yesterday you were sitting in your limo, going to prom, talking and laughing with your best friends about all of the memories you made together the past 4 years. My best advice is something I wish I knew last year. As I said before, this summer will fly by, so don’t waste a minute of it. You may not like one or two of the kids your friends are hanging out with, but go anyway! You never know when something special could happen. Go to an amusement park even if you don’t like the rides there! Be spontaneous! Do some new things with some new people. I’ll give you an example of something I did, I woke up on a Saturday morning and saw the Mets were doing a bobblehead giveaway. What did I do? I called up one of the few friends of mine that is a Mets fan. I asked him what he was up to that day and then asked if he wanted to go to the game. He said yes, and brought his girlfriend along as well. I hadn’t seen him often that summer and I had never hung out with his girlfriend before. But we went to the game and got the bobblehead. We saw the Mets get a win, a pitcher hitting a home run, and my friend won an autographed picture. Now imagine if he said no and decided to stay around his house instead. Say yes to the spontaneous ideas your friends have, try new things, eat new foods and overall, have fun.

The summer is going to go by fast and if you blink you may miss something. Go on adventures, enjoy the little things and be spontaneous. It's advice I wish someone gave me going into last summer. Have a fantastic summer, congratulations on your graduation, and best of luck in college to everyone in the class of 2016.