During my very last summer before college, I spent a very small amount of time doing things that I spent all my previous summers doing; not that it was intended at all, I guess it's just how the entire thing played out. Though I wish I had more time to spend with friends, at the cabin, making a bunch of lake memories before the time has come and summer ends and fall and school begin, I spent this summer realizing lessons about actual life.

The beginning of summer was spent attending various graduation parties and realizing that even though I will be going to college this fall, my graduation from high school won't be until next year. I tried imagining how different it will be when I go back to my high school and walk for graduation with my fellow classmates who, unlike me, spent their senior year as a senior rather than as a freshman. As I went grad hopping, I discovered how anxious I am for that day to come.

Looking at senior pictures that the graduating class of 2017 students had taken, I gathered a bunch of ideas for how I want mine, yet none of there's were exactly how I want mine to be like. Rather than doing the traditional summer senior pictures, I want to step outside of the box and do winter pictures. I realized even in that small deciding moment that rather than doing what everyone else does... or majority, how I want to be different. And right then and there, a part of me that I never saw before appeared and I realized that during my time away from home, that I want to become more different. I want to spend the next year stepping further outside of the little box I'm in. I want to wander away from my comfort zone, further away from what I have always thought of myself.

The next part of realizing life and the next important life lesson was friendships. My very best friend is one who I rarely see. This made me come to the conclusion that though I may not see my friends from home for a couple of weeks, that there still is a way to keep a connection with them. Though we may not be as close as we were when we saw each other every single day, there's always a way to stay in touch. This was a sigh of relief when this realization hit me. I wasn't really nervous about how I would keep in touch with friends up until the very last few months of my junior year. I started slightly doubting my choice of leaving to go to college this year. I worried how I wouldn't be apart of a friend group back at home like the one that I was currently apart of. I already felt myself slipping away from them and that worried me. If I was still seeing them every single day and yet I was slipping away, how could I even possibly keep apart of the group when I was away? And when I found that when there's a will, that then there will always be a way, I realized that then I would just have to make an extra effort to keep in touch. I would have to try to stay apart of the friend group extra hard.

Since I didn't spend too much of my summer with friends, I spent most of it working. I actually spent all of summer working. I work at a nursing home as a "part time" sever even though there were several times this summer where I went over my forty hours a week and instead went into overtime. This was a hard concept for my friends to understand. It was hard to get why I was working so much. But for me, the answer to that why question was so easy. I was working hard because I was working towards something. I was always the one who tried to get everything for myself with little to no help.

Paying for college tuition and books and required materials for classes this year will be free for me, but not housing. Housing is nearly half of the cost when paying for college and living on campus. So when I realized that I needed to pay over eight thousand dollars in just living on campus, I decided that working this summer -- working a lot this summer -- was going to be needed. I wanted to use my parents very minimally. Now, as summer is coming nearly to an end, I have made it this far. I've put the down payment on the dorm room that I'll be staying in, I've paid for all the things I'll need while I'm there, all of the furnishings for my dorm room, and any other cost that has come up along the way. I'm extremely proud of myself for being able to save and spend wisely. Though, here comes the point when realizing that that cost wasn't implied when living costs were discussed. And there wasn't a single way that I could make over $8,000 in one summer. I'm unable to take out a student loan since I'm technically not a college student, and am a PSEO student who's a senior in high school. Asking my parents to loan me part of the eight thousand dollars isn't something that I want to do. I've even thought hard about just staying in high school because of it. Though here comes the next lesson I realized this summer.

I've never been one to ask for help when I need it. I've always found a detour that finds me the answer without needed to directly ask someone when I'm stuck. I like doing things all by my self and asking someone for help doesn't quite fit that mold. The lesson of it being okay to ask for help came when I registered for college classes. I thought for sure that I could just do it all by myself. All of us PSEO students registered for classes together in a computer lab on the day of our orientation. So I found what classes I wanted to take, selected them from the list, and then went to have it reviewed by one of the PSEO student advisors and found out that I didn't do it right and that everything had to be deleted and had to restart.

After having to start all the way from the beginning two times, I realized that on my third try, I needed to ask for help. Clearly I wasn't understanding why I was messing up. And when I raised my hand, I wasn't too excited about it. Rather I felt like a let down and how I disappointed myself from doing it all by myself. Though during the time of selecting classes with someone watching over me, I realized that asking isn't bad and your more than likely going to get extra information than what you thought. In my case, this was definitely proven true. The lady told me classes that would be able to go for more of a broad spectrum of classes, something like mass communications would be a good general elective to apply to more jobs than micro economics would. During her time helping me, the woman told me about classes she really liked and pieces of advice for my very first few days being away from home and the days leading up to my first day of class. This has been one of the biggest realizations of my summer, right behind learning to let go.

I hold a lot of sentimental value towards so many things. I never find myself ready to throw anything away. Leaving home and picking through what I will bring with me this coming fall has been extremely hard. I keeping thinking how what if I need something and now I won't have it while I'm away? During the time I have spent packing, I've ran across a whole bunch of memories with friends, family, and places that I've had the opportunity to go to during my time outside of elementary, middle, and high school. And now that I'm leaving, I realize that getting out of school for a few days to go on vacation won't happen again. My time with my parents will be nearly gone except for on the weekends that I come home and after spending all my summer with my parents and only being away from them for one single night out of the entire summer, I've just gotten so much more used to them being there all the time and now here I am, in just two short weeks, all that will be gone. My time with friends has already slipped away and I've thought so hard about my decision of leaving home a year early. Will I regret it? Will I find people there to spend my free time with like I did here? Will I still stay pretty close with them? All of these questions I have no answer for but I will never know the answer if I don't try it.

So, here I sit, having learned all of these lessons through out the course of summer. I'm going to gain more independence from my parents and do more things in my upcoming senior year than most seniors will even come remotely close to. My next adventure has already begun. And there isn't a single thing that I would have done differently or changed during my summer before senior year of high school. Even though I'll be spending it as a freshman at St. Cloud State University, living in a dorm, and attending college classes as a fellow college student. And throughout the course of my summer, I've realized one more thing: That I'm ready.