Picture yourself two years ago, as a second semester senior just two months away from your high school graduation. The "best four years of your life" are just about to come to a close, and you are a short time away from beginning your college journey. Everything in your life is about to change. Your friendships and relationships will undergo multiple tests of trust, and only the strongest of them will persevere.

Graduation is just a short time away, and you are preparing yourself both mentally and physically to start the newest, most important chapter of your life. You keep telling yourself that you have to make Summer 2016 count, as it is the last one before all of your friends go their separate ways.

The thought of being on your own and living in a foreign, small, square space with a complete stranger is terrifying and exciting all at once. Leaving home is just one anxious thought that incoming freshmen are bound to have. Now, add in all the stress of picking classes, making a completely new circle of friends, balancing academics with extra curricular activities, and you have a whole cloudy vision of what you want your first year college experience to look like.

Now, fast forward two short years to the sophomore in college who is more than halfway through their second semester. After these finals, you can confidently say that you are halfway through the experience that once kept you up at night. You've survived almost two years on your own, you've adjusted to the college workload, taken numerous midterms and finals, fought your way through picking classes and housing, joined clubs and activities, found out who your friends are, found out who your friends aren't, balanced school work with said clubs and activities, had good days and bad days, and most importantly, discovered an important piece of yourself. You've hopefully figured out who you are and how you react in certain situations that you've never been exposed to prior to college. It is also likely that you're walking out of your sophomore year of college with new friends who you didn't even know existed two years ago. You've accomplished a lot in these two years, and you never realized how fast it goes by until you sit back and remind yourself that college, the place you've called home for the past two years, is almost halfway over. Cherish every moment from here on out- because at least for me, it feels like I was handed my high school diploma yesterday. Time flies, and it doesn't wait for anyone. Make it count!