Everyone says how fast high school goes. “Time flies”  and  “it will be gone before you know it,” are just a few of the phrases uttered over the years. The thing is, they do not seem to resonate until senior year finally comes around. For me, freshman year feels like just yesterday. Sophomore and junior year blur together, and out of nowhere I am at the top of the school. I find myself expecting to see an older familiar face while strolling through the halls only to realize there are no longer any older students, because I am the oldest. I am now one of the students incoming freshmen look up to. It is funny how old I thought the seniors seemed back then. Now that I am a senior, I still feel like a baby, almost like I am an imposter pretending to be a senior. 

Irritating thoughts about sitting in class or fighting the morning traffic in order to get a parking spot slowly creep into my mind until I realize everything will change after this year. As soon as I walk across that stage and am awarded my diploma, my life will never be the same again. The routines I have created for myself over the past four years will all be forgotten and will need to be re-created. My favorite places to get coffee and study for school, my weekend Target runs with my friends and my everyday gym location will no longer be mine. Of course they will all still be here when I return, but it will never be the same. I will be forced to find new coffee shops and weekend stress relievers. I will go from being the top dog to a fresh face. Next year, I will all of the sudden be the small nervous freshman getting lost on campus the first day.

All that being said, I have not even mentioned college yet. This alone is a huge stresser. College is so big, new and completely unfamiliar. It feels like such a foreign concept to me, yet it seems to be the only thing people want to talk about no matter where I go. I feel the stress of being expected to know exactly what I plan to do with my life when there is such a wide variety of options. What if I choose the wrong path and end up regretting not choosing something else? These ideas, along with so many other worries, crowd my thoughts. I have to remind myself that I have no control over how everything will play out. I can do what I can to plan, but after that I just have to let the pieces fall into place and believe that everything will work out.

I am determined to make this last year one to remember. I will live it up one last time. I will cherish my time at home with my family every night and the comfort of knowing exactly where I am meant to be. I will cheer as loud as possible on game days. I will soak up every last drop, so as to not feel that I took it for granted when next year inevitably comes around.