Normally at the end of every school year, I smile to my teachers and my classmates and say,“See you next year!”

This year, I’m signing yearbooks and smiling to my teachers saying, “Good luck in the future! I’ll miss you!”

This part of life is rather terrifying and scary, for everyone involved. Seniors are off to college or work or adventuring around the world, teachers are packing up classrooms they’ve occupied for years, waiting to see where construction will take them next, and some are packing up for good, heading out into the world to see what awaits them. It’s all mind-boggling.

I have a lot of friends attempting to just keep their heads up, not let all this change get to them and put them in the dumps. Graduation is supposed to be an incredibly fun and exhilarating time, right? A start of something new. But with new things comes the end of old and familiar experiences, and you lose what you’ve known for so long.

SDA is my home away from home. The newspaper that I’ve written for for two and a half years has been my voice here. The hallways are the most familiar parts of my day, the smiles on the faces of the people I see here my biggest comfort. The fact that I have to find new hallways, dorm hallways specifically, to become comfortable with, the fact that I have to discover new faces and new professors, absolutely terrifies me, but in the best way possible. Am I sad? Of course. More than I can put into words.

Personally I don’t think it’s wrong to be sad, or perhaps not as excited as you thought you would be a few months ago, or even downright terrified. Over the course of four years you’ve established yourself in this place, found your center and expanded from there , but now you’re being told to uproot all that you’ve accomplished here, and move on to do it all over again. It’s a daunting task, one that’ll take some people thousands of miles away to do.

If you’re graduating this year, or you’re one of the retiring staff, if your friends are leaving to move somewhere far away, or you feel like you just didn’t have enough time, don’t feel like you can’t be sad. Don’t think you can’t mourn for a place you’ve begun to call home. Soon, yes, this place will be gone, lost in a pile of rubble and loud machine noises, but what you had here will always be in your memory. You’ll never lose it, and it’ll always be a part of you. But remember, yes, it is one hundred percent ok to cry. Trust me, I’ve done it a lot these past few weeks.

In the grand scheme of things, the world here at this school, in this tiny weird little beach town, is the smallest you’re ever going to know. In a few short days, this world here ends, and suddenly a new one will begin: bigger, wider, more fresh and new and utterly insane than you will ever be able to imagine. And while I encourage taking advantage of the new opportunities and new adventures that await out there, I also encourage remembering this small little world. Remember the friends who smiled at you in the hallways, the teachers that gave you an extra day to get in a homework assignment because you were having a tough week, the random dance parties in homeroom and movies on rainy days, when suddenly the classroom floor in the dark was the comfiest thing you’ve ever experienced. Remember every stressful tear and gut wrenching laugh, remember screaming out the lyrics to your favorite song in the car with your friends during hour lunch, and remember how you barely made it to class on time because “I swear to god there was so much traffic.”

Just take a moment to step back and remember your time here, in this small world, where human connection was so easy, where life could stop for a second and you could feel the sunshine (because God only knows people are going to freeze to death in college the moment it goes under 65.) Remember the times when you let go and readily gave yourself to the world you knew, the friends you love, the support that came in all shapes and forms. Loneliness is a hard thing to overcome, and I know for many the crushing weight of homesickness and missing our friends and family will be terrible at first, but remember that this place, this weird little place, will always live on inside of you.

So yes, it’s ok to cry. It’s ok to be sad, or to be scared. But you’re going to be fine. We’re all going to be just fine.

Thank you to The Mustang and to Tim Roberts for two and a half incredible years, I’ll miss it all so much.