I’m more than sure that for some of us college students, the inevitable is coming: we’re graduating this year, or perhaps even this semester. As the future looms above our heads like a haunting cloud of miasma—a frightening and perhaps physically sickening idea—we all need to keep one solemn thought in our heads.

Our lives aren’t ending, they’re just continuing.

Now I could have said, “beginning” right there and clung onto a cliché that I’m sure everyone is tired of hearing. College, for some of us, has been the next logical step into the adult world; for others, it’s been a sidestep into figuring out what we want to do with our lives and for others still, it’s seemed like the conclusion of the sixteen-year-long schooling process. And yet, there are still some who can’t seem to fathom what life will be like outside the confines of structured schooling.

College is in many ways a microcosm of the world at large—it has people from all walks of life trying to better themselves in any way they can conceivably think of. Now whether that be education, social connectivity or simple camaraderie, these concepts are universal and exist outside the collegiate world. The mythical realm of the “adult” isn’t so mythical at all, and in fact it shouldn’t be. Everyone is concerned about the same things in the end—money, health, a career, a good life—and sincerely, there’s no reason to panic.

You may be concerned that your degree won’t get you anywhere but a minimum wage job. You may be upset that you won’t get to live in relative comfort anymore. You may be upset that the reassuring title of “student” will be torn away from you, forcing you to find a new identity instead. Sure, you may not know what you’re doing with your life in just one year, but one year is such a small fraction of an entire lifetime. Consider this: in high school, you were told to find a university you liked, find a major you were interested in and commit to both those things, all the while understanding that high school was winding down to its inevitable end. Now, four or so years later, that same sense of impending change is still hitting you but it’s not much different.

A major in the so-called “real world” just happens to be an interest that you pursued to a logical conclusion and a school is just some place that you can keep exploring whatever that pursuit led to. Terrible analogy, I know but bear with me; the future isn’t hitting me very hard at the moment. What I’m trying to say is this: yes, you have legitimate concerns about what’s going to happen to you in a few short months, but honestly, it’s going to be okay. Your life is going to keep moving forward and so will you.