As the class of 2016 graduates, I am forced to think “I can’t believe that I graduated high school an entire year ago.” This past year has taught me so much about school, the real world, making the right choices and ultimately myself. I may have actually learned more about myself in the past year than I have in all of high school. Life will be different from here on out, but it is manageable. When people say “Good Luck,” they mean it.

You will gather with all of your classmates one last time. You will each walk on stage and receive a diploma and then you will be graduated. High school is over. Now what?

It is officially the summer you have been waiting for for the last four years. It won't be much different from all of the other summers you had, though. You will hang out with your friends that you plan to see all the time. You will work to make money for school in the fall. You will attend orientation and either love it or hate it because they fill up your schedule so much during two days that you will sleep on the entire ride home and for the next week following it. You will be nervous and excited, but definitely ready for something other than the town you’ve been in for as long as you remember.

You begin looking for a roommate so you start to talk to as many people as you can on Facebook trying to find someone who will be compatible. If anything, it is most important make sure to figure out when they go to sleep and how early they wake up, you want to be able to get enough sleep in college. You may luck out like I did and decide that you want to be roommates with your freshman year roommate again. You may get one of those rare nightmarish roommates that everyone tries to scare you about. But if that is the case it is really, really easy to switch roommates if you need to. Put your happiness above anyone else’s and do not worry about what they think. If you’re uncomfortable, the school will always help you out.

You start buying pillows and comforters and making lists of things you need. You try to coordinate with your roommate so that your room looks like it belongs on Pinterest but eventually you will realize how difficult that is. Make sure you buy a vacuum if you are buying a rug and buy a fan. Rugs get dirty really quickly because you have to bring your shoes into the room and dorm rooms are constantly humid even in the winter. You begin to pack.

As you are anxiously waiting for school to start again, you will want to hang out with your home friends more and more. Then your friends will go off to school one by one, potentially leaving you as the last one in your town. Your parents will want to hang out with you more and more. They will start saying “I can’t believe you are going to college” and water-works will come daily nearing the last two weeks that you are home.

And then you will be packing the car. You will be squished half to death by all of the stuff you are bringing, then you’ll have to send half home with your parents because dorm rooms are tiny. Let your parents help you unpack. Let them put things where you don’t want them to and move them after. This is a huge day for you, but it is also a huge day for them. They want to help their baby one last time, let them.

You’ll meet your roommate and so will your parents. Your dad will make dumb jokes that embarrass you and your sibling will annoy you one last time and then both your parents will leave (after lots of hugging and held back tears).

You’ll do a bunch of meet and greet activities as a floor and take pictures that you’ll laugh at by the end of the year because you were all so awkward.

You’ll go out the first weekend and say this is crazy and you’ll do it again next weekend. Or maybe you’ll stay in the next weekend. You will find your balance with time. You will start classes and some will strangely feel like high school again. (Some will feel easier, some harder).

After a month or two you will call your mom less but be thankful that she was there and always will be. She will offer to pick you up next weekend probably too because she misses you as much as you miss her.

Soon it will be Thanksgiving and all of your friends will be coming home too. The group message will be lit with plans that you won't carry out until Winter break. You will return home and pick up where you left off like you never went to school.

And soon you will be done with the first semester.

And your second semester will fly by just as quickly.

And soon you will be sitting there like me saying wow this year went by quickly.

But you will realize a lot.

When you joked around saying “I will probably never see this kid again” you may have been right. A year from now you may not have talked to more than a handful of people in your entire class. You may bump into random people unexpectedly when you are home from school and have to endure awkward conversation starting with “So how is school going?”.

You’ll have had a few breakdowns and now know how much you can handle.

You will have made a few bad decisions and know never to again.

You will realize you have made friends that you will keep forever.

You will realize you need to work for what you want.

You will be happy, you will be sad, you will pull all-nighters and you will go to sleep for a full 24 hours.

But you will have fun.

And you will be counting the days until you return.

Congratulations class of 2016, and good luck you’ll need it!