Dear Graduate,

Since graduating high school many moons ago, I have learned a thing or two that I wish had been told to me way back then.

Amongst the shuffling of emotions that most teenagers feel when faced with the daunting prospect of the ‘real world,’ my graduation class struggled with an emotion not commonly associated with graduation, grief.

A beloved classmate of ours was involved in a fatal car accident on 485 the day after our senior prom, exactly a month before our graduation.

Instead of hard truths told bluntly enough to cut through a young adult’s mentality of the future, we were handed Kleenexes and told to take as much time as we needed.

I’m not saying we did not need that time, we did, just that some life lessons may have fallen by the wayside in favor of grief counseling sessions. It was truly an impossible situation not only for us, but for our school.

You probably have buried deep within your psyche the knowledge that ‘life goes by fast’. Maybe you have heard one of us old timers mumble something about it once before.

The ride goes by faster than you can fathom while you are waiting patiently in the ticket line to board.

Whether you realize it or not, your ticket has been pulled. From the second you walked away from your graduation ceremony life’s stopwatch clicked into overdrive.

If you are graduating and choosing to enter the workforce, I want to gently remind you that most people only get one shot at college or trade school. It is easy to think you will go back and get that education but statistically speaking continuing education gets harder to make time for and afford.

Another point not driven home to me when I was a student, is just because your dreams are big, you can settle for smaller goals.

For example, you may want to be an actress. Who is to say you could not go to broadcasting school and become a news anchor who gets discovered? Maybe you become a radio disc jockey who only needed the right person to hear that special voice.

I have written books, unpublished, since I was in first grade. I am not yet on New York’s bestseller list, but I am writing for a living and consider my job to be the fulfillment of a life-long dream.

Big dreams are accomplished with small moves and faith. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

When you are climbing the education ladder with single minded focus on tasting the ambrosia of success, it is easy to get caught up in obligations and earned accolades.

Who you are will be decided by the memories those around you hold in their hearts and minds of you. How you treat the people around you, the places you go and the people you meet decide the legacy you leave. My high school graduation class learned this lesson early.

Employment is a building block to financial success, not necessarily happiness. No matter what position you hold, every position is expendable and replaceable, even the presidency of the United States, so do something you love and never sacrifice loved ones or experiences to get ahead in a job. Moments are fleeting and the right conditions seldom come around again.

When planning one’s life, consider what your priorities are, what goals you want to accomplish… consider you and only you. Take this time to be a little selfish, it may be one of the last times that you get to.

From here on out the decisions you make are forming the blueprint of your life.

Life is a rollercoaster and where we go and how fast we get there are based on the choices we make every day. Choose wisely 2024.