Freshman year. You’re in a new league. Although it’s the beginning of your journey, you can’t wait to get it over with. You can’t wait to graduate into the “real world.”

Sophomore year. Almost halfway there.

Junior year. If the due date is not tomorrow, the do date is not tonight. It’s the year where your actions actually seem to impact your future endeavors and you feel the pressure to succeed, knowing your actions over the next year will decide your fate.

Senior year. You’ve made it. It’s time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor. So you think. Yet college applications consume the first quarter of your perfect year. When those are finished, you decide to have an academic comeback, remembering that your senior grades do still matter. But it’s all over soon enough. Breath, your college applications are in, decisions are out, APs are finished, and suddenly it’s the last month. Your future endeavors are being questioned and you’re still having second thoughts about your major. The celebratory atmosphere of the last month consumes and excites you, however a thought surfacing in the back of your mind irks you. You’re graduating and it’s time to move on. The ‘we’re going to be late for class’ suddenly turns into ‘we’re late for graduation’ and you realize the people you’ve spent the past 4 or 12 years with won’t be there every day.

An upperclassman once told me to savor the “boring” days as much as graduation because high school passes in warp-speed. Initially I was dismissive of this idea, but as a senior, I realize how wrong I was.

As we look to the road ahead, let’s not forget the late nights hunched over our laptops, caffeine fueled study sessions, and existential crises as we realize our procrastination went too far. Here’s to AP reviews and celebratory cafe visits, to socratic seminars, to badminton losses grieved in jalapeno shack, to the art wing in which I spent numerous nights decorating, to soaking in the sentimental energy of the last days of school.

Here’s to graduating.