Seems like just yesterday we were signing yearbooks, overly anxious for graduation and moving onto college. Now, four years later, we’re now graduating college and moving on to true adulthood. Memories surface from the last big graduation celebration we had and we’re thrown back into all the things we remember from our high school days.

Over the last four years, chances are that the people we were best friends with in sixth period English we may not talk to or if we do, it’s rare. That’s part of life. We all have grown tremendously in the last 4 years and have become our truest selves. As we’ve all created lives for ourselves in every corner of the country, and even around the world, we are always connected by our high school roots. And for that, I’m somewhat grateful.

Four years ago, we played sports together or had AP Lit together or just knew each other in passing because you knew everyone in high school. Today, we may still know each other’s names but that may be it. We’ve lost that personal connection but that’s okay and it’s a part of life. Flipping through our 2012 yearbooks reminds us of that common connection which seems so far away now as college graduation is closing in, reminds of where we were, who we were and how far we’ve come.

Scrolling through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter shows just how much we’ve all changed and grown. It’s exciting to see everyone getting ready for graduation and (maybe not so excited) to go into the real world. For most of us, the only way to see each other is on social media, which is fine, it still gives us a connection and makes life pretty cool. So as we’re all graduating and ending our four years at college, we’re all busy on social media sharing photos of the end of year parties and throwbacks to freshman year and all the wild events in between. We’re all doing the same things, just all over the country.

Reminiscing on our old high school days, four long years ago, it’s surreal that we’re at this point in our lives. We’ve overcome obstacles that would’ve TERRIFIED us in high school. We’ve done some crazy, uncharacteristic things while at our respected colleges. Some of us even went to another country for months. We’ve done a lot in four years and it’s only the beginning of our lives.

To everyone I graduated high school with, I hope you have an incredible life. If we see each other in passing, it’ll be fun to catch up but chances are, we’ll just be too busy without new and exciting lives to really go back. This is just the start of our lives and to think high school was four full years ago now is incredible. Congratulations Class of 2016, time to be adults now.

“Life is the most exciting opportunity we have. But we have one shot. You graduate from college once, and that's it. You're going out of that nest. And you have to find that courage that's deep, deep, deep in there. Every step of the way.” – Andrew Shue