To the Class of 2017,

Heads up! You're graduating in a couple of weeks. Eeek! I know sounds scary right? Who'd have believed you've come this far? From all the crazy dorm-room/college-life shenanigns, hangovers, all-nighters, study groups and last-minute essays, you've finally reach the last few days leading up to where you'll walk up stage, receive your diploma and enter the real world. And yes, it will be scary.

2017 has been interesting year. Starting with the Russian involvement of the US Presidential Election with a racist, misogynist, egomaniac setting to demolish everything we and the Obama administration worked for, including Climate Change, Obama-care and the Department of Education (not to mention Student Debt).

I'm not telling you this just to scare you, but to say that now more than ever is the time to become aware and to get involved.

You all have had the amazing privilege of going to college, some of you may have been the first in your family to do so. Not only have you aspired to and expanded your intelligence, but you've made friendships that will last a lifetime, surrounded yourself with people who understand and love you, supported your beliefs, critiqued and challenged your views and even pushed you to try harder whether it comes to academics, community involvement or extra-curricular clubs and activities. I can't express enough how much college life really impacts and changes a person. The time you spent here is the most richest and precious time you will ever spend in the course of your career outlet. That four-year period of transitioning from teenager to young adult is more life-altering than High School. While in High School, yes you will have changed. You will have most certainly improved beyond that awkward phase of Middle-School when you were learning about puberty, relationships and how to respect your peers. By the time you reach High School, you're beyond most of that premature transition.

But college is where it really grinds down to. College is where you finally discover how to be an adult--it's where you turn 21 and become legal! College is where you truly discover who your friends are, who has your back, who loves you no matter what and where you really stand not just with your beliefs but in the course of academia and how you do you when it comes to work.

We're at a point in our lives now where college, as matter of fact, education shouldn't be taken for granted anymore. Yes, graduation can be scary and you might not see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least not yet. But that doesn't mean it's the end. Only the next chapter in your lives. Sometimes we might not all succeed, not right away. Maybe some of us will still be living with our parents, even til we're 28 (I know that thought scares me more than anything). But it's okay. It doesn't mean that you've failed, it just means you're still figuring out where you want to go from here and that's okay. Some people have found success later on in life, in fact probably way beyond their thirties.

Finding success and "failure" are only a necessary part of our lives. If you think the most famous people didn't trip and experience failure, watch these motivational speeches by Denzel Washington about "Falling Forward" and by J.K. Rowling about "The Benefits of Failure".

Essentially, both same the same thing. Failure is inevitable. You are going to fail at some point in your life and that's okay. It's only another learning experience, one that you don't cover in the classroom. It hits you head on and it's unpleasant. But what you can take from that is learning from your mistakes, learning what you could've done better as a risk-taker and how you can do better in the future. Einstein, Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington, J.K. Rowling and many other incredible successes have tripped up on the road, made mistakes, failed but what defines their strength is how they were willing to do it again, regardless of whether they looked like a fool and it has resulted in some of the world's greatest artists and brilliant geniuses of all time. But, you know what else kept them going? The tools they acquired from the world of academics. So, yeah at the end of the day, you're gonna be exhausted and you're gonna think this all may have seem pointless, that in won't land yourself anywhere, but in the long run, the skills, friendships, experience and knowledge you have gained from a college is worth it.

Here's what I can say I wish I knew going into college and what I wished I did differently. I wish I could've had more time, to learn new things, take more risks. The prospect of going out into the real world and finding a job/internship scares me more than anything right now. But now, at this point in our lives, don't take the benefits of what you gain from college for granted.