Graduation… It's a huge landmark in one's life that celebrates their accomplishments before they move on to the next stage of their life. High school graduation and college graduation are huge landmarks in life that we put so much emphasis on. We spend 12 years working to prepare for college and 16 years working to earn an education and a degree before we experience life in the real working world. These 16 years seem like a big portion of our lives, spent studying, stressing, experiencing new things, making life-long friends, and even more.

Yesterday I attended my brother's high school graduation, which was an emotional experience. It seems like just yesterday, I was graduating from high school, and now 3 years later, I'm on the other side and watching my brother walk with his diploma. I can't believe this moment has already come. He's already graduating high school and will be attending college in just a few short months! I feel like I was just walking by him in the hallway at the high school when he was a little Freshman and I was a Senior, and now he's about to be a Freshman in college and I'll be a Senior (what?!?).

It's a cliché that we've all heard a thousand times, but time really does fly. When we're in the moment, it feels like school is forever. We attend over 6 hours of school every day for 180 days. College goes by even faster since you might only have a few classes a day with huge time gaps in between. But let's be realistic, college requires way more brain power than high school does, so of course, we get wrapped up in all of the work and forget about the concept of time. School is part of our daily routine and we get so lost in it that sometimes we forget to take a step back and realize that it's only a tiny portion of our existence.

While I was sitting through the graduation, listening to speeches praising the graduating class for all of their hard work, I couldn't help but think about my time in high school. I found myself reminiscing about old memories from my time in high school. I even thought about some of the things my classmates said at graduation that I still remember today. Things that I thought were so important at the time, feel so irrelevant now. I feel like a different person now than I was in high school, and yet it was only 3 years ago that I was stressing over what college I would attend and where I would end up. The graduates in my brother's class seem so young to me now. They have so much ahead of them, and yet when I was graduating high school, I felt so old.

Next year I will be graduating from college and it's crazy to think about how fast the last three years have flown by. In my last year of college, I need to remind myself to take a step back and enjoy all of the amazing memories and friends college has given me and how I will forever cherish them as I move on to the next stage of my life.