I’ve always been one of those students who dreads leaving high school. The sadness stems not from a fear of college, but because I’m averse to change.

To many, high school is a four year prison sentence with no possibility of parole. To me, it’s four eventful years, 720 busy school days, 344 amazing peers, and a million memories.

Algonquin holds myriad life lessons, friendships and memories, and those things have shaped me to be the person I am on graduation day. But that doubt still lingers, the idea that maybe I’m just not ready to move on.

Four years is, undeniably, not a substantial amount of time for someone to decide what they really want to do in life. When you’re bogged down by exams, work and life, the future outside of high school is the last thing on your mind. But those moments are the perfect time for mistakes to be made in order to figure out who you are and what you enjoy learning about.

Change is scary, and I would have been the first person to say that I didn’t want to go far away from home. But feelings change, and when you know what you want, moving 440 miles from your family to Washington, DC seems like the most logical step in the right direction.

In the end, graduation should not be a time of regret, of sadness, or of anger. Rather, it should be thought of as another stepping stone on our path to a successful future. As the Olympian Kristin Armstrong declared: “Times of transition are strenuous, but… they are an opportunity to purge, rethink priorities, and be intentional about new habits.” After today, the world really is your oyster, so make the best of what you have now, and then prepare yourself to take on the future feeling motivated and eager.

After suffering through four years of rigorous testing, carrying around 30-pound backpacks (Noah Brazer), talking loudly in the library (sorry, Mrs. Rehill), hosting midnight study sessions, ranting about teachers we loved (Ms. Burns), and rolling down the D100 ramp during Press Week (#GoHarby), we are ready for the next chapter in our lives. We are done with school bells, mandatory gym classes, late slips, detentions, crazy car lines and curfews.
So while my heart says I’m not ready, the diploma that I’ve received shows that there are bigger and better things to be accomplished outside of Algonquin.