At last, our high school graduation is upon us. For at least the third time in our lives, we will undergo a mass social dispersion; but unlike any other graduation we’ve had before, this one entails (for most of us) a mass social migration as well.

Throughout the past four years, we’ve forged friendships that have shaped us and defined us and forced us to evolve in ways we had never imagined. And now, faced with the inevitability of our separation, our four years of affection will swell and culminate in an orgasmic summer throughout which we’ll care about each other as passionately as we’ll know we always should have. And we’ll head off to wherever we're headed, leaving promises to keep in touch, and armed with AIM buddy lists and cell phones stocked with old friends’ screen names and phone numbers.

And every once in a while, we’ll call to catch up or we’ll meet up at the burrito shack and ask how we’re doing, and for a few fleeting moments, things will seem almost as they used to. Many of us, no doubt, will be slower to let go of our faded affections than others, eager to revive them and confident that we can. By and large, however, we’ll drift apart as certainly as we’ll promise to keep each other close.

I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard friends say, without the slightest hint of reservation in their voices, that they can't wait to be out of high school—it’s a sentiment most often fueled by sometimes false beliefs about how different college will be from high school: about how much more mature and less dramatic our newfound friends will be or how much more freedom we’ll be allowed in choosing our own classes.

Admittedly, I’ve always lusted desperately for “something else,” and imagined that college would afford me the liberty to live and interact the way I know I want to. I’ve let myself believe that the future holds something grand for me, that something worthwhile is waiting just around the bend. After long enough, though, I’ve come to realize that myself, and not my circumstances, define my satisfaction with my life. I’ve come to realize that I can’t waste my time living for tomorrow, that this is my life and it’s well worth enjoying, laden with work, drama, or boredom as it may be.

I love all of you, and as reluctant as I’ll be to see our departure, there’s no one else whom I’d have rather leave at my high school graduation.