Here I am, a senior in high school, left with just 3/4 of my year to go. Campus visits are slowing down, the ACT is something of my past, and all my college applications have been submitted. Now I wait.

I have always been a creature of habit. Everything “routine” utterly fascinates me. Ever since I started watching YouTube, my favorite videos have been “Get Ready with Me”’s. It’s not that change scares me, but sometimes I’m just not ready for it. I’m not ready to say goodbye to normalcy. 

Of course all the quintessential senior year lasts will be hard — prom, PA, spirit week, etc.—but nothing will be as bittersweet as letting go of girlhood. 

I will miss my pale pink walls coated with pictures from the last 17 years, the smell coming from upstairs of one of my mom’s new Weight Watchers recipes, whispering to my friends on FaceTime because it’s 11:45 on a school night. I will miss wearing flowered pajama pants under my plaid skirt so that I don’t catch my death on the walk from my car to school, constantly getting told to spit out my wad of spearmint, the shifts where I purposely schedule my breaks with my friends so that we can catch up and laugh till we cry, and the Friday nights I spend walking the halls of the Med Center PICU looking for a bedside that needs a companion. I will miss it all.

But there’s a new normal waiting for me,  or so I’ve been told. Until I get there, however, I will spend every last moment cherishing “the little things” that brought me up.