So I have one more semester left until I am halfway done with my collegiate, undergraduate career. My oh my how the time flies. It feels like just yesterday I was touring schools, comparing and contrasting their pros and cons, furiously and eagerly planning my future.

Now my future is almost here.

I have picked a major (two, in fact). I have established a group of trustworthy, down-to-earth friends, I have made plans to travel abroad, I have contemplated graduate school, future jobs, and future homes.

Four years might seem like a long while, but it really blows past you like the vigorous wind up here on the hill. Time in college is spread so thin. Everyone is so busy with classes, sports, jobs, socializing, accomplishing new goals, and seizing new opportunities.

One day you plan to major in biology and become a pathologist. The next day you are an English and Classical Studies double major who wants to attend graduate school in Chicago.

I never understood all those posts telling high school seniors to appreciate their last year in high school because it would be the best year of their lives. I hated high school. I could not wait to graduate, move far away, and move on with the rest of my life. Don't get me wrong, I love my home town, my family, and a select few childhood friends, but I did not peak in high school. And I could not be more grateful.

Life beyond high school is so much more cosmic than I could have imagined. It offers opportunities for independence, fun, leisure, stress, success... It basically determines who you are as a person, who you will be as an adult, who you will be for society (which might sound scary, but it is really not as overwhelming as you may think). It builds character like no other experience.

Somedays, I look up to all my senior friends, preparing to graduate, move on to grad school, or start new jobs, and I wish I could be up their with them, about to propel myself into the real world of adulthood. Then I pause a moment and inhale all the values I have gained in my short two years. Then I exhale with relief at the thought that I still have two more (short) years left to really absorb all the mistakes I will definitely make and all the lessons I will hopefully learn.

I have been ready for the rest of my life since 11th grade. Now that it is almost here, I want things to slow down. I am not saying I wish I could do things again, because I would not change a thing, but I am saying I am learning to appreciate every busy, stressful, agonizingly beautiful second I have in college. I am developing as an adult. I am not necessarily saying goodbye to my inner child, but she is learning to make room for a more responsible grown up version of myself.

I am learning to stop and smell the roses. Cliche, but true. Patience and appreciation are truly virtues that, when left to squander, are hard to get back. I am taking my opportunities to instill those values within myself, because I only have two years left. I know it is going to fly by like the darting hummingbirds in the brief spring. I can only learn to bathe in the sunshine while it is reigning down. This is my opportunity, this is my future, this is my college. The future will be an adventure, of course, but I am taking my time getting there. The present is all anyone ever has.