In high school, I kept my social circles contained to people within my grade. So, at the end of the school year, I would watch as my friends would bid tearful goodbyes to their friends who were graduating that year and from the sidelines, I never quite felt the same sentiment.

Then when I was a senior, I didn’t expect to have any younger classmates come up to me with similar emotional bravado. Deep down though I did wish that I had a certain mark on someone where they would take the time to say goodbye.

In some ways, it was like an outward glow of popularity if you had younger students coming and saying goodbye to you as you left home for college.

Now though that I am in college my social sphere has widened and I understand what it’s like to be the “younger” friend watching as your graduate and leave you behind for the great wide world beyond.

This year it has especially hit home for me. My roommate is a senior and I incidentally have found myself working with quite a few seniors this year and getting close to them.

At the beginning of the school year when I was first getting to know some of these seniors I was thinking to myself, “Wow, this senior class is a really phenomenal class. As a school, we are lucky to have them and their contributions will be sorely missed come May when they graduate.”

Never did I think of how I would feel come May because initially, I didn’t think I would get as close to some of them as I have.

So now, as the countdown to their graduation day draws near, I am finding myself just as anxious as they are about the future.

First, it was 100 days until graduation, now it is less than 70, soon it will be under 50, then 25, and before we all know it, graduation day will come.

As the number of days gets smaller and smaller I will try to savor each moment I have with every one of my friends who will be moving on to their exciting futures. Each meal, each night staying up late and talking, each day at work, each time in class. I will hold on to them while they last because soon I won’t have the luck of seeing each of them every day or even just simply bumping into them around campus.

The first time it hit me how much I would miss my friends who would be graduating this spring was back in December when I asked my roommate, “You’ll come back to D.C. after you graduate right and visit?” I know she has every intention of going home to New Jersey after graduation which I completely respect, but still, Jersey is only a train ride away. Her answer though rocked me.

“Um. I am not sure. Maybe?...” She said this with a total lack of confidence.

At that point, I knew that based on her poor snap chatting habits from the previous summers and minimal texting it would be very unlikely for her to come down to make the visit.

It is wild to me to think that when I move out and say goodbye that for her and I, this could very well be the last time we see one another, at least for a very long time, if not forever.

So, to the rest of my friends who are graduating and moving on, I have this to say, please when I go back home for the summer let us say, “See you soon” and not “Goodbye.”

Seeing friends from college graduate isn’t the same as seeing friends from high school graduate.

When we graduate high school, most of us have our hometowns as a home base for us to return to for school breaks and summers, making it easy to see each other again.

But in college, most of us came from all over to our common campus and now as those of us who are graduating get ready for the next chapter, they are looking to move on to other places. Although, thankfully there are the ones who choose to stay nearby.

So when we graduate from college, there is no guarantee of when the next time we’ll see the other person is, we can only hope, promise to make plans to come and visit, and then hopefully execute on those plans.

So, my final word, to the college seniors graduating, please come back and live vicariously through your friends who are still in school. You know where to find us. In the meantime, make sure the couch you get for your new apartment has a sleeper sofa so those of us still in college can get a taste of the real adult world and can come crash on your couch from time to time.