About a year ago this time, I was graduating from high school. No big deal. Just your average teenager from a small town who happened to hit it big. Who happened to hit it all the way to Stanford, California.

Yet, I can’t help but linger on what is no longer. I am no longer a high schooler, no longer a student at my rural, small town high school. Though my school was by no means perfect, I miss it — I’m nostalgic. Our school had this saying, “Once a Wildcat, always a wildcat.” Over the past few weeks, this has hit me. Hard.

Recently, I went to my sister’s college graduation. It hit again. That odd feeling you get in your stomach. It’s like sonder, but it isn’t. It’s one of those pivotal moments where you realize who you are and what’s actually going on in life. During this drawn-out graduation, it struck me: I’m no longer in high school. I am no longer the person I was in high school.

Graduations are such a powerful force. My campus minister recently told me about his favorite bookshop in Vermont. On the stones leading up to the bookstore is inscribed a quote: “Nothing is written in stone.” (Except, I guess, for that stone.)

However, I beg to differ. Graduations are written in stone. They signify the end of an era. That’s it. Once you walk across that stage, you are no longer a part of college. You can go to as many frat parties and cram as many p-sets as you want, but you will no longer do it as a college student.

A little while back, I stumbled upon senior Chloe Brown ‘25 working one of her near-to-last shifts ever at The Farm. She told me, “I love this job and I’m really going to miss it when I’m gone.” Once she graduates, she’ll never be a student intern again. She can arrange as many floral displays and pick as many flowers as her heart desires, but it won’t be as a Stanford student.

Somehow, in some way, I feel like the same thing is happening right now. As I am writing this at 3 a.m. in my dorm room, one of my closest friends is about to move out for the summer. But it doesn’t feel like only that. It feels like the end of an era. I am slowly watching the relationships and community that I have painstakingly built over the past year crumble into pieces. I am literally watching as my friends move away.

I’m confused. I thought periods of change were supposed to be bittersweet. Why is this just bitter? Why do I despise change? Change put me in the lofty place I am, and now it is kicking me down. Life, it ebbs and flows.

I move into sophomore year with more uncertainty than I would have ever expected. I would have thought that I had figured it all out. That I would have my friend group, classes, clubs, my everything. But, man, it sure isn’t feeling like that right now.

Instead, I feel like the crushing load of finals week has shown where my priorities are. I have been stressing to make sure that I can still get that A or A+ or whatever it might have been. I have been fretting over grades.

Let me tell you something that I hope I will eventually internalize: grades don’t matter. An arbitrary letter on a paper shouldn’t guide my life. The satisfaction I get from grades shouldn’t be my everything.

That close friend that is leaving in about five hours, let me tell you what he told me. It’s the simplest question but something that I don’t think I ever will have the answer to — nor should I. He asked me, “Will, what do you really want in life?”

For all my life, I probably would have said it would be to be in the place that I am right now. However, I want to propose a different answer. I don’t want grades, I don’t want money, I don’t want fame, success, love, athletic achievement. I don’t want any of it right now. Right now, I want time. I want to be able to freeze it in a bottle. To think about it. To cherish it. To live it.