Senior year is what we have all been waiting for. Ever since preschool, kids have always wondered what their life would be like senior year. They wonder how it feels like to be on top. Being a senior of course feels great. However, there is the one major downside to it. The last times.

As we enter the dreaded halls we’ve called our prison for these past 4 years, they suddenly don’t seem as unpleasant as they did before. Walking down the halls now almost gives off a sense of remorse for how little we cared about school until this moment. This year is the last time we get to walk these halls as a student in high school.

We have experienced our last first day of high school. We have sat through the classes with the people we have known since elementary school for the last time. It will be strange next year to not be in a class with my best friends. It will be strange not frantically texting them at 6am to get the homework I forgot about. All of that is over and we are beginning a new chapter in our lives.

There are some good “last times” that we could all do without. We won't have to wake up at the crack of dawn anymore just to make it on time for school. We won't have to spend 7 hours a day in one building. I won't have to deal with the strict dress codes anymore. I won't have to wait to make an appointment with my guidance counselor to change my schedule that they messed up.

Of course with the last times, there has to come first times. This year we will send in our first college application, acquire our first scholarship, get accepted to a school for the first time, and leave the nest for the very first time. That all sounds terrifying, I know. Once it's all done, and you hug your friends for the last time before you enter into this new life, you will then realize how fast this all happened. Wasn't it just yesterday we were sitting in a circle our first grade classrooms introducing ourselves? It is so very bittersweet. You want to be a kid again but you also want to grow up and experience college. Life only moves one way and we are all headed for adulthood. Some may go to fight for our country, some may go to college, and some may take a year off. No matter what you chose for your life path, the last times still leave this sad feeling in your gut.

Make the most out of your senior year and spend as much time as possible with your friends and family before you adventure out into the real world. It’s sad now but once we get there, it will be a whole new phase of excitement.