Is Everything Changing?: A Letter to the Seniors

See first: Back to my Roots: A Letter to the Juniors

Welcome back, seniors! As a lover of summer, I find it extremely bittersweet to be returning to school for senior year. A part of me is utterly anxious about the heavy workload I know I’ll be facing: college applications on top of difficult classes and various fall extracurriculars. Part of me excitedly anticipates a festive Senior Sunset, Powderpuff, and the endlessly-celebrated Senior Spring as we all prepare for our promising futures ahead. And part of me is wondering: Is everything really changing?

To me, this past summer definitely felt different. With new licenses came new freedoms, new fun, and new independence. I made new friends, explored new places, watched new shows. I have a new makeup routine and new favorite clothes. 

For many of us, senior year is synonymous with change. We’re turning 18. We’re discovering how we’ll be spending the beginnings of our adult lives. It’s even an election year. 

And yet, despite all this change, I feel that there are fundamental parts of all of us that are the same. While I did make new friends, my core group remains. Though I’m closer to 18 than I am to 17, I’m not feeling any more like an adult. I still get bruises all over my knees like I did as a little kid, and I still (periodically) write entries in the same pink princess diary I wrote in at age 5. Does this make me unprepared for independent adulthood? And more importantly, though I try to push this thought out of my mind, will college admissions officers and my future college classmates see right through me?

I find solace in knowing that most everyone feels the same way. And this is how we’re supposed to feel. Our lives are structured so that doors are thrown wide open for us when we haven’t even quite gotten the hang of where we are now. We’re unsteady. It’s what makes coming-of-age movies so good, and these years of our lives so formative. Parts of us may be the same, but nevertheless, in growing up, we’re learning to pick ourselves up again when we fall. 

Senior year is about the moments we spend in our community before many of us leave for good. This means being there for each other. We’ll go to the library together and celebrate with ice cream. We’ll rely on group hugs and movie nights, like nothing’s changed at all. And next summer, when we’re saying our “goodbye for now”s and it feels like everything is changing again, we’ll have grown up even more.