We watched our parents drive away, pinching our eyes shut so the sting of tears would leave before they could look back in the rearview mirrors of their cars and see their children standing at the front entrance of their dorms.

It was the move-in day of freshman year.

But we rushed off to a day of planned activities, hopes for new friendships and party-filled weekends bouncing around in our heads. We paired up with our roommates or people on our floor and ran around campus. It was our own if only for the couple of days before class started and the upperclassmen moved back in.

And now, years later, we sigh thinking about how little time we have left to spend in the limbo phase that is college life.

There’s a certain bounce in a freshman’s step, a certain naiveté that we jaded sophomores, juniors and especially seniors find both endearing and annoying. But until now, the summer before my senior year, I was never envious of freshmen. They wear lanyards and pay to get into parties. What’s to be jealous of?

But they have something that upperclassmen of college or even college grads desperately want: more time.

Entering into my senior year of college feels like going into the ninth inning of a baseball game when you’re down five to nothing. Or trying to find a cute new outfit on Sad Saturday, the less commonly known name for the day after Black Friday. It feels like you’ve lost before you ever try. We know that in twelve short months, we too will have college degrees forced upon us. We will be forced out of our college towns and into full-time employment (or so we can hope).

But in all seriousness, the dread surrounding graduation is frighteningly real. And it’s not because we don’t want to get hired at our dream jobs or continue into graduate school. It’s because we have to leave the friends that have filled almost every kind of relationship someone can have. They have been our roommates, sisters, brothers, therapists, fellow partiers, wake-up callers, side-by-side Netflix binge-watchers, fast-food aficionados, classmates, cheap wine critics, advice gurus, co-workers, boyfriends, girlfriends, traveling companions, teammates. They’ve been there to see us when we’re absolutely broken and when we’re shining in whatever we do.

We leave our college towns, our favorite food places, the little corners of campus we hide in, the classy bars and the not-so-classy ones. We leave the places and people that have shaped much of our lives throughout the past couple of years. So doing the infamous graduation walk might not be as easy as it seems.

Gone will be the days when we were a couple minutes’ walk or drive to the majority of your best friends, the days when we could just skip class and lay in bed if we’re having a bad day and our parents will stop paying for things little by little.

I once expressed my dread of graduating to my dad, saying that four years just isn’t long enough for me. Who wouldn’t want to stay in college forever? But he told me that by the time those four years are up, I would be ready to take the next step in my life. And at first, I totally didn’t believe him.

But if you love your friends as much as I do, and you love your major as much as I do and your college town as much as I do, I have some good news. You’ve just found a place that you can always go back to. You’ve created a network of people, both professional and casual, that you can lean on when you need them for emotional support, jobs, encouragement and advice. You have just spent the past four years doing what you love, only to continue doing what you love in an even more real sense at an actual job.

And I have faith that every single college senior, by next May, will be not just ready, but looking forward to the future. There are plenty of things to love about adulthood—successful careers, moving to your dream location, finding the love of your life and making new friends. Just look at the characters in "How I Met Your Mother" or "Friends" or "The Mindy Project." They have plenty of fun and they all have jobs and responsibilities. And if the fake lives of TV characters can't convince you that everything’s going to be okay, then ask your parents how they felt after they graduated. I bet you’ll hear some pretty awesome stories about their lives when they were in their early and mid-twenties.

Think of your college years as your origin story. You discovered your super powers and your weaknesses, you made enemies and sidekicks. But an origin story is called that for a reason--it's just the beginning and we want to see what happens in the rest of the story.

Your life doesn’t stop when you graduate—it actually starts. And yes, no amount of anecdotes or ice-cream will make leaving our friends or beloved universities any easier. But every experience is bound to end at some point so that we can make new ones. These new ones will continue to shape our lives. We will meet people that we couldn’t imagine our lives without, and somehow, I believe we’ll all find a place in the world that we feel was meant for us to fill.

By all means, go out and party all senior year, write those cover letters, do the interviews, tell your best friends that they’re amazing, thank your family for their constant love and support. And when you inevitably get sad about the end of your college career, think about how leaving high school felt similarly sad. I don’t know about you, but I think I’m a smarter, more well-rounded and mature person after a couple years of college. After graduation, we will only continue to rise up in the world. We’ve kept in touch with the people from our childhood and from high school that truly matter to us. And after we receive our diplomas, know that we’ll always have certain people in our lives that we’re really close with.

You’re allowed to be sad, but not yet. Wait until the last month to feel reminiscent and yes, a little scared. But don’t spend the whole year worrying about what the hell you’re going to do after you graduate. Spend it having the time of your life and know that you’re life is only just beginning.