“I think the scariest part is realizing that I’m growing up. That in a year I’ll be graduating and getting ready to leave for college. That in a little over a year I’ll be at college, away from my parents and essentially independent…an adult. It doesn’t seem right to me. I’m still a child. I feel like I’m still a child. I’m afraid of accepting responsibility. I’m not even really sure why.”
I wrote that last year. The weird thing is that I feel strangely grown up since then. I am finally excited to accept the responsibility that is about to be cast onto me. I feel as though I have grown and matured so much this year.
I have learned that what matters most to me are the people who have been there. I have learned that my parents will always be there and always love me, no matter if they can be pains sometimes. I have learned to love. I have learned to sympathize. I have learned to take care of people in times of sickness or need. I have learned about the mortality of humanity, young (barely 18), middle aged (42) or old (85). I have learned that wasting time on politeness is not always the best policy—that sometimes it is just best to speak your mind. I have learned what kinds of people I enjoy being around and which kinds of people I honestly cannot stand.
I am learning to trust myself. I am learning to believe in myself. I am learning to be secure in who I am. I am learning my passions and my strengths. I am learning to accept that there are some things that I will never be and that there are some things I once considered out of my reach that might just be possible after all. I am learning that the world is filled with endless possibilities, but that my choices, interests and desires temper them. I am learning what it is to love. I am learning what it is to be human. I am learning what it is to be an adult.
Years from now I will have forgotten what polar covalent bonds are (I already have, who am I kidding?), what the rooting reflex is exactly, the precise plotline of Hamlet, in what article and clause the supremacy clause is found, or what Engle v. Vitale proclaimed. In twenty years I will remember how my time in high school, and especially my senior year, taught me how to be an adult, how to be me. I will remember the friends who loved me and I will remember the teachers who guided me. I will remember my growing ability to handle the opposite sex, culminating in the chance to fall in love my senior year. I will remember how high school allowed me to explore who I am without my parents and my family.
Where the next steps in life will lead me and who I have become is hard to predict, but I have no worries and no qualms. Life, overall, has been good to me. The bad times have made the good times more enjoyable and have taught me how to cope. Without those eras of bad, I would not be half as strong as I am today.
I am ready to graduate. I am ready for responsibility. I am ready to test what I have learned.
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