Everyone tells you that college will be the best four years of your life. Boy were they right. When I think about everything that has happened throughout the past three and a half years of being at Florida State University I can't help but feel so incredibly thankful. I received lots of different advice when I was entering my freshman year.

People would tell me "Make as many friends as you can," "enjoy living in the moment," "the friends you make in college will be the friends you'll have for the rest of your life."

I truly had no clue what I was in for, and now here we are with only one semester left, two of my best friends just graduated, and I could not be more grateful for what this university has given me.

Senior year is like a giant smoothie of emotions. You're excited, nervous, sad, sentimental, anxious, and sappy all at once. The thought of not seeing all of my best friends every single day is honestly unbearable at times, but it also makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have found friends that make it so hard to say goodbye. It's true what they say, you really will find your absolute best friends in college.

Some of them will drive you nuts at times, some will make you laugh until you can't breathe, others will be the shoulder you cry on when times get hard, which they will.

College has been the best but also the most challenging years of my life. I've made incredible achievements, I've failed a class, I've found the women who will be my bridesmaids someday, I've experienced loss, grief, and the hardest situations I have ever had to face.

College is what molds you into the person you become. It teaches you to be independent, but to make friends you can depend on. It teaches you that you are capable of doing life on your own, but also that you never have to do it alone.

If I could go back in time and give my freshman year self some advice here are some things I would say.

1. Don't waste a single day.

Now that I have almost run out of time, it makes me look back on all the days I wasted just laying in bed or not doing anything for hours when instead I could have been spending that time with my friends. I could have been dancing until 2 in the morning with my best friends, getting security called on us three times, and waking up the next morning with legs so sore I can barely move from dancing so much. You only have four years. Don't waste them.

2. Make as many friends as you can, you're going to need them.

Your friends are your family in college. They will be the ones who take you to class when it's raining, take you to the emergency room when you fall out of your bed in the middle of the night and dislocate your shoulder, make you laugh until you cry, be there for you when a boy breaks your heart, encourage you to study harder or convince you to go out when you shouldn't.

3. Be the best friend you can possibly be.

I didn't truly understand what it meant to be a friend until someone was a true friend to me. I went through the absolute lowest and most challenging time of my life my sophomore and junior year of college and the reason I came out the other side a stronger person was because of my friends. They make me want to be a better person and a better friend because of the friend they've been to me.

4. Don't blink.

Four years will be gone like that.

Thank you to the ones who make leaving college so hard, I could never fully put into words how much you mean to me.