This huge lump always develops in my throat whenever I come to the realization that I am entering my final semester of college as an undergraduate. Whenever I say it out loud, I am almost at disbelief because I never really knew that I would make it this far. Throughout most of middle school and high school, school was something that I despised the most. When it came to the constant workload and the shitty mean kids that roamed the halls, I dreaded my alarm waking me up every morning for a day of torture and hell. It's funny how far I have come from all of that, now I wish that I wasn't finished with school so quickly.

If you think about it, school is what we are trained to focus on since the age of 4 and now it being almost 17 years later and school is soon going to be no longer on my to-do list, I feel a little lost. Now the next step is to find your starting career, you know the job that you are going to hate for the first few years but you hopefully, during that time period, move onto bigger and better things. Well, that's at least what everyone is telling me is supposed to happen. That's the thing, you can never be too certain about your future because life just takes its course.

I want to try my hardest to embrace this last semester as an undergrad and hopefully, I will be able to experience new and exciting things to keep me moving, motivated, and excited to see what else life has in store for me. Moving on to this completely new and foreign chapter in my life is scary to say the least and as much as I want to tell myself that I can handle it, I am still worried about failure. Failure has been something I had a hard time dealing with most of my life, but I do know it is a crucial part in life that cannot be avoided so easily. Making mistakes it just a huge part of the whole process. I just hope that in the end, it will all be worth it.

Going through these 4 years of college, I have realized that life throws millions of curveballs your way and expects you to figure out how to catch and deal with them. In the end, I always seem to find my way (with millions of emotional breakdowns and outbursts included) but hey, no one is perfect. College has taught me a lot, more outside of the lecture hall rather than inside. I have learned that cutting toxic people in your life is a must, no matter how hard it may seem or how much you care for them. I have also learned that life is full of bullshit that you have no choice but to deal with and when you try to avoid it, it comes back to haunt you. The most valuable lesson that I have learned within these past 4 years would be to believe in myself and to take care of myself before I start to take care of others. If your own life is falling apart, how do you expect to put someone else's back together?

I will miss the people I have met along the way and will cherish all of the positive experiences I have had and learn from all of the negative I put myself through. Who knows where this next chapter in my life will take me, but I am ready for it no matter what.