The end. What comes after high school’s end? The answer isn’t as simple as “college.” Your friends, people who you might be as tightly-knit with as family, what will come of them? 

Will we come to betray the people who we said we’d keep contact with?

The “real world” has begun. We’ve heard since we were children of the “real world,” a time when we will be responsible for our own selves. Back then, we wanted to grow up in order to live the lives of our elders, in this “real world.” However, as we grew older and wiser into our present-selves, we harbor sentiments that we don’t want our childhood to end. As leaving our childhood, means leaving everything we’ve built across the years. Yet, society demands we join this “real world” so we don’t have a choice. The real world doesn’t care about how one feels.

The importance of the real world was established by our elders, and now we’d put it above everything else. We’ll put the security of a college degree over our relationships. Those two close friends you’ve seen in the hallways, they will be too busy studying in college to have time to meet each other. We’re so afraid to be lost in this real world that we forget the value of our dearest friends. Relationships die for this real world!

O reader! May you not fall into the trap of this painful “real world” and cherish your social life, as well as your studies. As we finish our college studies and obtain our degree, we’ll remember the people we left, and ask ourselves if it was worth it. Will the answer give us a smile on our face or a tear on our cheek?