With only a few weeks left in our senior year, most of us can sit back and relax as graduation dangles just out of reach.

Leaving will be harder than I care to admit. With friends spreading all over the country as they head to college, it will be difficult to keep in touch. Some bonds that have been important to me will fade away and disappear forever, but the times spent with these people will continue to mean the world to me as they have been instrumental in shaping who I am.

I have mixed feelings about graduating. It’s like the feeling you get when you walk out of the house and you’re ready to leave, and even though you know you have everything you need, you can’t help but feel like something’s missing. I know I’m ready to go to college. I know that I’m ready to move out into the real world, but I think the thing that’s missing is the desire to.

Maybe I’m alone in this, but I wouldn’t mind more time in high school. I wouldn’t mind more time with few responsibilities. Apart from school and a job, life is pretty easy right now. As long as I get my homework done and make a little money here and there, everything will take care of itself. I don’t have to worry about any bills, and I don’t have to pay rent. I can hang out with my friends pretty much whenever I want.

With graduation comes the real world. I won’t be a kid anymore. I won’t be allowed to be carefree. Taxes, phone bills, electricity, rent, water and Internet; everything I took for granted as a kid is going to now have a dollar amount attached to it, and I’m afraid of being overwhelmed.

As daunting as that all sounds, I continue to spend my class time daydreaming of June 7 when I walk across the stage and I don’t have to come back again. Maybe it’s ignorance, maybe it’s the false sense of adventure that graduation seems to bring, but I continue to count down the days until I walk out of Legacy for the last time. With those last steps across the stage comes independence, freedom and the ability to decide for myself exactly what I want to be doing and when I want to be doing it.

I’ve watched a hundred friends walk across the stage and get on with their lives just fine, so I guess I don’t have any reason to think it will be different for me. I’m just wary of being overwhelmed by college, bills and the responsibility of having to take care of myself. In the back of my head though, I know that it will all work out and I’m excited to see what the world is like.