Dear Scared High School Graduate,

This is a letter to the seniors who have just graduated or are about to graduate high school. Some of you might be excited for the future, some of you might be petrified beyond belief. To the seniors who are petrified beyond belief, don't worry it's a completely normal feeling as well because a year ago I was in your shoes.

I'm very open about how I was shaking and scared to go to college. I didn't really want to accept the fact that I had to go to college and that I was about to go through one of the biggest changes of my life. I didn't want to graduate and have my life change before my eyes.

I really wanted time to freeze and for everything to stay the same forever. I was at one of my happiest points of my life, and I didn't want that to possibly end. If you're feeling like this, it's completely natural and it's okay to feel like this.

It's been a year since I've graduated, and my life has changed drastically, but for the good.

Your freshman year of college is going to be filled with ups and downs, and you're going to lose touch with quite a lot of people from high school. I am not going to hide that from anyone because that is the reality of the situation. However, that is a good thing.

High school is a great place and I love and miss my high school, but college is better. College grants you things that high school isn't set up to give you because of time and the system of it. College is the place where you are sort of are given training wheels to being an adult, as crazy as that sounds.

At the time of my graduation, I thought I knew who I was, I thought I knew what I wanted out of my life, I thought I knew my values, and I thought that I would end up the way I was when I left high school. Ha, I was so wrong it's funny.

In college, I think I learned more about myself in the 9 months of me being there than I did in my entire 18 years of life. While I was doing this, I had some of the best experiences of my life. I was doing things that high school didn't grant me to do so because it's not college.

I wish I could give a better answer, but I can't because college just naturally grants you so much more independence than high school because of how it's set up. In high school, you don't get to make many choices, whereas in college every choice you make is ultimately yours. It's weird, but it's the most freeing feeling in the world at the same time.

The independence that college grants you, sets you up to have the greatest time of your life and you meet some of the greatest people in your life. I am living proof of that, and most if not, all college students are that way as well. If you've followed my Odyssey articles, you've seen that because I have written about them.

To the petrified high school senior, it is going to be okay. You're going to make the best of it, and if you put the effort into making college a good experience, it will turn out to be the best experience of your life. You're going to learn a lot, and you're going to want to share those life lessons with the world.

Enjoy your high school graduation, enjoy the people you're around, enjoy your family because in college you won't get to see those people a lot. That's a good thing though because when you come back home, you'll cherish your time with them more. Also, you'll be around really cool and awesome people in college, so you get the best of both worlds.

From,

Formerly Scared High School Graduate