Graduation had always felt so distant. I watched my upperclassmen graduate and thought of it as a very natural process, and never thought I would be in that position. Throughout my four years, this was the moment I continuously waited for. I just wanted to finally graduate and “grow up.” I wanted to be independent and go to college. However, during the last few days of high school, I knew that I would miss these moments. Never again would I meet my friends everyday, or enjoy free time during classes, or talk to my friends during gym while walking around the track.

The younger me would have never imagined myself graduating high school. Not that I didn’t think I would graduate high school–I knew that I would graduate high school and college as well. I didn’t really think of high school graduation as an achievement but rather a natural process. I was graduating because I took classes and time passed. However, this was also the end of academic careers for some of my classmates. This was the end of “school” for some people and was their biggest academic accomplishment. Although we started together in the same elementary school, middle school, and high school, we were finally parting ways for college. We would all be taking our own paths and there would be some people that I would never ever see again. And we would end up in such different positions in the future.