Hello School Year of 2016-2017,

It’s nice to meet you. Sort of.

We don’t know each other very well, but next month we will be going through a year of life together— or rather, I’ll be going through the next year of my life, and that happens to be the same year in which you’ve decided to live as well: senior year.

Upon finishing my junior year, I am stuffed to the brim with the voices of recent graduates telling me, “Senior year is the best year,” and, “Just wait! It’s so much fun!” and any other type of motivator to make senior year seem not so scary.

Yet, somehow after all of that, after all of the reassurance and newfound excitement, I am overcome with two things: confusion and fear (mainly fear, though if we’re being honest).

Confusion has started to visit me more often with the birthdays I’ve had. It seems to always smack me right after I blow out the candles on my Portillo’s chocolate cake that I am in fact, growing up. Those two words are words I whisper both in my head and out loud, as if saying them softer makes them less true—“growing up.”

What an odd concept it is to grow up. Confusion breathes down my neck and racks my brain for answers as I type each word of this letter, making me realize that time is slipping through my hands faster than anything I’ve ever held. Then I take a look at the current moment of my life and I am stuck believing it moves at negative two mph. By some miracle though, I’ve almost arrived at the first day of my senior year of high school.

Where did all of that time go? I mean seriously, I was just scraping my knee on the wood chips at my elementary school playground, I was just standing in my middle school library telling a girl I had a crush on that I liked her, I was just walking into my high school for the first time with my sister as my guide—showing me the halls and how my locker worked and how to get out of high school alive, I just met my best friend in my freshman PE class because he and I were (and still are) extremely sarcastic, I just went to my first high school dance, I just had my first kiss, I just-

I didn't just have any of those. There’s a minimum of three years in between me and every single event I just listed. So senior year, this is where the fear starts to set in, along with the memory loss.

I don't remember what I wore the first day of school freshman year, but I remember running to find my classroom, tripping down a flight of stairs while the general population was in class, only to find I had literally stumbled into an upperclassmen couple making out under the stairs. Needless to say, I move slower on the stairs now.

I don’t remember my grade in English sophomore year, but I remember sitting next to my best friend in Eco Bio and laughing so hard at something she said that we had to be separated for the remainder of the semester so we wouldn’t be “disruptive to our peers.”

I don’t remember my grade in math junior year, but I remember laughing so hard I almost had an asthma attack at lunch because of the things people at my lunch table would say.

One of the biggest lessons throughout the past three years is that you remember the memories much more than you remember the material. Take high school seriously, but also learn to realize that there’s life after high school. Life where you need to be independent from your parents and your friends and you need to be you. Don’t waste too much time looking ahead. Cherish the time you have with these people.

Even with the stress of the ACT, junior year doesn’t seem as stressful as senior year. You have to fill out applications that determine your next four years of schooling, if that’s what you choose to do, you have to decide on at least some idea of what you want to spend the rest of your natural life doing to earn money, you have to wait for weeks while colleges decide your fate, you have to keep up with grades, extracurricular activities, a job and looking like you have it all 10000 percent together so the board at your dream college will stamp your application with a big green “approval” and you have to make sure you meet graduation requirements and make it across that stage to that diploma.

Then it’s over.

It’ll end like a cheesy movie. I’ll throw up my cap, take pictures and leave the football field, no longer a high school student.

That’s what’s more terrifying than anything. The fear of the unknown. The fact that I don’t already know where I’m going to college and what my life will be like in the future. That I don’t know what senior year holds. It’s exciting, but I won’t lie and try and hide the fact that every time I look in the mirror, I’m somehow taller than I was before, and how growing up has only seemed to go faster and I hope it slows down soon.

Don’t get me wrong, college is gonna be a blast. I’m extremely excited to study what I want and have that freedom. But I can already feel myself becoming transparent, like a ghost running out of time, soon to be out of the high school realm.

So in closing, senior year:

I am looking forward to you with both excitement and fear. You’ll hold a lot of things for not only myself and my classmates, but our futures, too, and for that I’m thankful.

To my fellow seniors:

We are the oldest we’ve ever been and the youngest we will ever be. With that said, let’s take a step into the unknown and grow as individuals and as a new generation. We have the power to change the world, so let’s.

Sincerely,

An excited, scared and ambitious high school senior