As I head into my senior year of high school I am filled with an incredible amount of emotions. Excitement, stress, and a general get-me-out-of here attitude. Three years of high school has been quite enough and I am definitely catching an early case of senioritis. However, mixed with this usual dread of going back, there’s a sense of comfort. For three years I have bopped from club to club trying to figure out which to pursue. I have lost and gained friends and not always known who to sit with at lunch. But as time passed, things fell into place and I can finally say that I feel at home at my school. I know how to make the best milkshakes in d-hall, which teachers and classes you should avoid and the best hiding spots for day students to dick assembly. I can picture myself sprawled on a blanket beneath the soft blue sky of our quad or curled up in my carrel with my laptop and a mocha swirl coffee from dunks. I have figured out how to survive at my high school and I’m no longer afraid of not knowing where I fit. I have made incredible friends and heart-warming memories and now I simply need to keep doing what I’m doing and I’ll make it.

With that being said, there’s a sense of finality in entering your senior year. You know that soon you will attend your last high school dance and your last football game. Countless school traditions that have been so ingrained into your routine that they have become a part of you will cease to exist. It’s exciting to know that in one year I will be moving on to bigger and better things but there’s still a certain irony in that as soon as you feel comfortable in a place, you leave it behind.

And because of how exciting leaving for college is, I often forget about the worst part of senior year -- that on top of an unimaginable workload, you have college apps. From hours upon hours of standardized testing, to studying for that testing, to writing your essay, to visiting colleges, it seems like an endless process. You literally need to sum up yourself in a page and a half prompt. That’s a lot of pressure. It’s hard to enjoy the “lasts” of senior year when your free time is filled with showing colleges that you’re more than just your grades. Speaking for myself here, I know that as I start to fill out these applications, I begin to question myself. Did I join enough extracurriculars? Does my sporadic interests make me well rounded or not committed? Are my grades good enough to get me into my top schools? Did I do everything that I wanted to in high school? Do I have any regrets? Again, with the finality of senior year comes a certain self-doubt. It’s hard not to compare what you experienced in the last couple years with those in the movies. Sometimes we're so focused on our grades and presenting ourselves for the next chapter that we forget to live in the present. To go to parties, stay up all night with your girls, or kiss the hot boy or girl who sits next to you in Chemistry. As we head into our senior year, this is our last chance to do all the things we shoved to the side and replaced with school work.

As a seventeen or eighteen year old, we are awarded so much more freedom than when we were a freshman. Most of us can drive or go out to lunch with our friends. At least for me, I know that there is no longer always a parent hovering over my shoulder nagging me to start my homework. We’ve become completely responsible for our own success and there’s a certain beauty in that. That everything you do from here on out won’t be watched or monitored, that you have been given the tools you need to succeed and that it's up to you to put them to work.

There’s not much more time to add to your high school experience. This part of your life will soon become just a memory, a story you will tell. So work hard, live in the moment and once your college apps are in, go nuts.