As we approach the second semester, many of us find ourselves struggling to plan out our futures and make life altering decisions. With college looming around the corner, the decision remains, to stay or to go.

There are people that thoroughly enjoy high school and actively participate in school events and will look back on this time in their lives and remember it as the best time they ever had. Many couldn’t imagine leaving home or the town they were born and raised in to venture out and attend some far away school in search of new experiences.

Then there are people like me who believe that college is a “fresh start”, the one place you can finally go and be whoever you believe you’re destined to be. Most high school students are pegged with typical labels and stereotypes from almost the instant we start our freshman year, many of us, including myself, dream of going to some big school in another town and breaking out of my stereotype. The idea that I could escape from this town and never see a single familiar again while making something of myself is so enticing that its all I strive for. The only issue with this is what if the people you’re trying to escape are “following” you.

I plan on going to college in another town a couple hours from here and, to my surprise so do several other people from my class. The first time I heard this, I panicked, the one opportunity I had to escape the people I’ve been surrounded by nearly my entire life was being taken away. The familiar faces would follow me, along with their opinions of me. I would never truly be able to break free. These thoughts shook me to the core and I couldn’t accept the idea of never being able to get away. It wasn’t until I had a few friends come home from college that I really understood what was waiting for me. They explained to me that there is a new life waiting for me after high school, a real life.

Many of them had attended universities with classmates they knew in high school. What they stressed most to me was that college is a different world from high school. They told me that the likelihood of seeing the people I knew was slim to nonexistent and they ensured me that I would be in a different town, surrounded by endless possibilities, and new experiences and people. No one is bothered by who you were, people are there to see who you will become. Wasting time worrying about who might be in the same school as me will only overshadow the real reason I’m there for myself.

So I guess I’ll take it easy for now, I won’t stress over who will and who won’t go to the same college as me, I’ll just enjoy the time I have in my hometown and look forward to the days ahead.