To all my fellow graduating Temple seniors, we’re going to make it

Let’s talk about it. You know the thing that is happening today. The giant event that will change our lives forever.

We will cross a stage and hear some people speak and all of a sudden our lives are in our hands. We aren’t dumb college students anymore – we are part of the real world.

Don’t fear Owls. Think back to the things we went through to get to this point because let’s be honest most of us will get our shit together. You will find a job. You will fall in love and you will find an apartment (that’s not attached to your parents house).

But before today. Before you finished your last final before you put in your cap and gown (before you threw back those shots because none of us could sit through this completely sober) there were the first things. You walked onto campus fresh.

There was the first day. The day your parents pulled up with a stock pile of supplies shoved into their minivans. You hopped out as if there was nothing stopping you. It was the start of this magical four years.

We all knew it was scary to leave the comfort of our parents house. But let’s be honest most of us could not wait to live our own lives with our own rules.

The first week was pretty eventful. You went to your first real college party, and like many of us it was probably AEPi or Kappa Sig because walking across the street was easy. We rolled up squad deep and anyone could pick us out as freshman, but we didn’t care. We drank the crappy beer and jungle juice and danced around with our friends.

Once welcome week ended we all had our first real experience with setting our own alarm for class because our mother couldn’t run into our room and drag us out of bed. We all had our own experience with sleeping in and skipping class too.

These were our adventures and it was our time to learn and grow up. Now most of us try not to skip class, even though a 9am on Thursdays it hard to get to after white girl at The Horse. But these are the firsts we can look back on today when we finish our lasts at Temple.

We all had our hearts broken for the first time, whether it was from your high school bae who you thought you would last forever with or the guy/girl from that random party who never texted you back. But we got up, we got over it and now we are heading into a land of more mature dating (or maybe just moving from Tinder to Match.com).

We all felt the time passing by – it seemed to go faster as the semesters passed. All of a sudden you were unlocking the door to your first apartment off campus because no one likes to live in the dorms. You had your first wine night with your roommate where all you did was lay on the floor with a box of Franzia, laughing nonstop at whatever nonsense you seemed to talk about. You could hear the partygoers outside but it wasn’t about the crazy party it was about the time you spent with the people who were becoming more than your friends.

College friends have always been different and we know that. You make your friends because of a common interest, not just because you grew up down the street from them or had been going to school with them since the beginning of it all. College friends are the people you know you love because they are a piece of you. I think everyone can remember the moment you knew you were close enough with someone to call them your best friend. It may have been the time you cried over a stupid boy, or a bad grade on a test. It may have even been when they told you that when you were going to eat Chinese food from the SAC and chug down a cup of apple juice you were going to ‘shit yourself’ (and yes this was a personal experience).

We’ve all come a long way these four years – it has been a struggle for all of us. But it’s also been the best four years of most of our lives (I know it has been for me). With graduation a couple hours away and the real world calling our names as soon as we walk across that stage we all have to make that leap.

Some of us may move away, some of us will stop talking to our friends that we seem inseparable from now. Some of us may change completely in another four years, but we will all look back on our time at Temple and have our own memories, our firsts and our lasts. We aren’t going to remember every bad grade we got, hell we aren’t going to remember every good grade we got. But we are going to remember the people we spent everyday with, the stupid parties and bars we went to.

So I say this to all of you reading. If you are about to walk on that stage and turn yourself towards the real world, don’t be scared because we are all going to be okay, we will all make it because we are all Temple Made.