I like to compare high school to a roller coaster.

Freshmen year is when you get onto the ride, where you are all excited for what is coming, but also anxious, anticipating frightening drops and turns but never knowing when they will come. Fast-forward to senior year, where you reach the highest point before the final dive down, balancing on the edge of your future.

When you start out as a freshman in high school, your entire life feels like it begins and ends with the next four years. This moment of time where you stand on the precipice of the start of your future, and you are not entirely sure what’s going to happen or where life will lead you. You are not as concerned with the future as you are with the present. Sophomore year is much of the same thing, but now you feel like a pro at the whole high school experience. Junior year brings more anxiety and worry, but it’s your buffer year before the realities of the world– university, work, life– start to settle in. You can think about the future but from a safe distance.

I am halfway through my senior year of high school. The shininess of this new and impactful experience has worn off and my protective buffer of high school life has disappeared. Gone are the days of just worrying about extra credit opportunities, standardized testing and busy work. The world is calling now, and I do not know if I want to pick up the phone.

Graduating from high school in the not so distant future makes me appreciate the little moments so much more. The late night FaceTime calls with friends before a major exam, the constant social buzz of different school clubs and cliques, the getting to know your teachers and your peers, the individuals who have built you up and made you who you are today. What I look forward to the least, though, are the goodbyes.

While graduating is scary, saying goodbye to this part of my life is even worse. You get used to high school just in time to finish the ride. See, everyone is apprehensive of getting on a new ride when they get on, but, once the ride is over, there is always that moment when they want to get back on. However, the thing with high school is that it is a one-trip journey. Once it is over, it is over.

On top of the pressure of having to say goodbye is having to finally grow up and give up on your Peter Pan fantasies. People say graduating high school means becoming an adult. The very notion that I have to grow up and be essentially shoved out into the big, bad world by myself terrifies me.

Now, I am not saying I am not excited for the future or what it holds, because I am! While I will never forget high school and its profound influence on my life, I am ready for something new and fresh. While it’s been an amazing four years of my life, I definitely hope they are not the best years of my life.

At the end of the day, I am so grateful for what high school has given to me. It has helped me grow academically as well as personally. High school is an experience, but as the saying goes, you get out what you put in. That hard work is what shapes and builds you into who you are meant to be. And, with university, travel, or whatever life pushes at you on the horizon, it is time to see the potential you have and to see how much you need to grow. No matter what happens, what is most important is the path to self-discovery you will find along the way.