It seems like just yesterday we walked into the halls of our school as awkward, immature fourteen and fifteen-year-olds who were both petrified and ecstatic to take on the journey that is high school. Over three years later, we're about to embark on the home stretch of what is so often called "the best years of our lives."

The next few months contain the events we have waited for our entire high school careers: senior prom, senior trip, senior prank, college decision day, and of course, graduation. It'll be the last few months we walk the halls that we have for so long recognized as our second home and attend the school that made us the family we are today. Throughout the next few months, many of us will put on our jerseys for the last time with the boys we have come to consider our brothers and girls our sisters. It’s the last few months we’ll have with teachers that have irritated us, disciplined us, but also cared for us – a feeling that has unconsciously become mutual. It’s the beginning of the end of the countless hysterical conversations we’ve had together in the cafeteria or the hangouts we’ve had in the senior bathrooms. It’s the final times we’ll have altogether as our own unique family before we begin to separate and create bonds with people from all over the country. And while this seems all too sudden, there’s nothing else we can do than to embrace every single moment we have left.

Use these last few months to create a real friendship with the kid you only talk to in science class because they’re smart and you need them for answers – you’ll miss them come September. Take the time to get to know the teacher you’ve only seen as boring and annoying because they too have a story to tell and they’ll miss you when you aren’t there to complain constantly come next school year. Attend every school event you possibly can – including the little ones “no one cares about” – because once you receive that diploma there’s no going back. Take the time to appreciate every minute detail about the school that has shaped you into the man or woman you are, because it has appreciated your presence every day of these last four years.

But most of all, just live it up. I’m not one to believe that high school is the “best years of your life” – that’s for you to decide. But this is the last time you’ll have with barely any care in the world. Go to that party or stay home and eat your chicken nuggets with your best friends, it doesn’t matter as long as you take each moment you have and make it something you’ll remember years down the line. Tag along with your mom when she goes on her errand runs because this time next year you’ll wish you could. Take a night to hang out with your siblings – regardless of how annoying they can be – because when they hug you goodbye on the day you move into college you’ll wish you could rewind time. I know we’re all beyond ready for college and to begin to write the next chapter in our lives, but this is the last moments of innocence and childhood we have left. Don’t be the one to let them slip away.

Make the most of it, ’17.

A fellow senior