Being a senior has many perks. I mean, it’s senior year! However, whoever said senior year was a “breeze” lied.

Senior year is the year where all your three years of hard, agonizing work come into play and begin to matter for your future. You have to take the SAT’s and ACT’s, ASVAB’s and TSI, all which will determine what the next chapter of your life will be like.

Your grades as a senior need to stay up, as well as your GPA and class rank. You have so much on your mind about college on top of your senior teachers hounding you with work that seems like a lot that you can’t keep up with it.

Senioritis comes into play two weeks into your senior year. You wake up every morning with the thought of dropping out due to the amount of stress you go through.

You begin to think “Do I really need college?”, “Is dropping out really that bad?”, “Why am I here?”

You’re tired and you will want to give up and just… skip it all.

That’s just what we do as seniors. It’s hard. It’s not a breeze.

But don’t get me wrong – the memories you have your senior year are overwhelming and will be unforgettable. It’s one of the most unforgettable years of your life: pep rallies, football games, volleyball games and basketball games, prom, senior skip day and tons of senior activities that will help you connect more not just as a class, but as a family.

Yet, we get to that point where we see our friends and peers that we have known and grown with over the past 12 years choose different routes with their lives and begin their next chapter.

That’s the hard part.

The part that isn’t a breeze is when you are thrust into adulthood. You leave your high school life that you’ve known for four years and start something completely different. You leave all of your old memories to start new ones. The life you’ve known just… changes.

However, no matter how far you and your friends grow apart – emotionally or physically – you will always have the memories you made as the high school class of 2016.

Maybe it won’t be that hard.