I spent New Year’s Eve as I have for the many times, hanging out with friends. Once we counted down to the ball dropping and rang in the new year, someone said, “Guys, we graduate in five months.” That’s when it hit me: I’m leaving high school.

I had watched older friends graduate, and two years ago I watched my brother do it again, and every time someone graduated I thought, “Someday, that will be me.” I never realized that my “someday” would be sooner than I ever imagined. In about five months I will leave this building for the last time as a student.

I’m sure every senior has that moment of realization, just like mine, but it all seems too soon. I never thought I would actually survive until graduation and now time is flying by.

I have no doubt that for most of the graduating class, the next chapter in our lives will only be better. Our college applications are in, we have (for the most part) chosen a path for next year, but for the next five months, our lives will consist of attempting to care about school, forcing ourselves out of bed, planning graduation parties and going through the motions.

I hope that everyone in the senior class chooses to enjoy this the way I plan to. I had always heard from the older classes that the senior class really comes together; something I haven’t yet seen this year. I have heard it described as everyone “just getting along and being happy.” I still have hope for this magical phenomenon.

I have spent a lot of time trying to grow up. I always want people to perceive me as mature. Now, while we spend our last minutes on the verge of actual adulthood, I am attempting to cling to my childhood. I don’t want to seem even a little too old for the “childish” things of my past and present at high school. It has dawned on me that all of the things I have been “too mature” for are actually part of the high school experience.

The world I will enter at college is sort of a test bubble of the real world. Our generation is not being handed a great job market or a perfect world, but there are grand possibilities out there. While we sit in our classes, daydreaming of the future, I am going to make a change. Instead of living my very numbered days in our little Free State community thinking out the next step in my life, I am going to attempt to follow some very overused advice: live in the present.

I am going to live up every last cheesy, school-administrator-approved moment while I’m a Firebird. We might as well enjoy it while it lasts.