To the Class of 2017 in your final days,

You’ve attended your last homecoming, your last football game, your last basketball game and, soon, you will attend your final prom. You’re nearing the end of the familiarity of your school years. Soon, you’ll be at graduation, holding your diploma and crying in your best friend's arms as you venture onto different paths. Some of you will go to college nearby, but some of you will take bigger leaps and leave your home to go somewhere unknown.

Don't let these last few months slip by you. I know it seems as if there are bigger and better things after high school, and there is, but enjoy the last few moments as a high schooler. Dress up and go to prom with or without a date. Spend every moment you can with your best friends. Enjoy your last few months of living at home.

Because in a few months, you'll be moving into a college dorm or into your first apartment with your friends, new and old. You'll be attending your first college lecture. You'll be spending hundreds on textbooks. You'll be attending your first college football game as a student. And I can tell you from experience, there is nothing like being in the student section while you cheer on your university's team, but you will miss high school.

For the next few months, don't take anything for granted. When you're sitting alone in a huge dining hall for lunch, you'll miss your group of friends you ate with every day. When you're sitting in your lecture on the first day and realize that no one you know is in your class of three-hundred, you're going to miss the small class of thirty with your best friends. When you walk across that stage and accept that diploma, the last four years will have come to an end with all the familiarity that it held.

Enjoy the laughs, the once-in-a-lifetime moments, the people you've come to love and all of the hard work and dedication it took to get this far. You've made it, class of 2017. Congratulations and good luck in the next chapter of your life.