Graduation Season or Goodbye Season?

Tiffany Sun

June 20, 2025

As summer is in full bloom, I scroll through my Instagram feed, watching videos of graduated seniors run towards the sunset and the waves, hands out to the wind, kicking up sand at the camera; while others laugh with their friend group of 6 on the steps of a Japanese temple, arms looped around each other, smiling at the camera; while others are soaking wet, screaming and playing in the pouring rain, with the dense green jungle of the Amazon as their backdrop. In every corner of the globe, senior trips—the most anticipated experience and the pinnacle of one’s high school journey—are where the class of 2025 has dispersed.

On the flip side of Instagram, I see people celebrating college acceptances from getting off the waitlist or successful appeals, a screen full of confetti encompassing 12 years of education—of falling behind, of catching up, of gaining ahead, and then falling back again as the whole cycle repeats. Every single one of them deserves the screen of confetti appearing before them, if not deserving of way more than what that acceptance letter can give.

As the midpoint of summer approaches, the looming presence of college life becomes less and less ignorable. Relishing in the succulent joy and freedom of a senior trip, it feels like nothing has changed, nothing will change; it feels like this is what they’ve been waiting for all along.

Yet as the saying goes, “all good things must come to an end,” and sooner than anyone ever wanted, goodbyes are said and hands are waved as people depart in separate directions at the airport, with grey colored U neck pillows slung lopsidedly on suitcase handles and the all-too-familiar sterile airport smell stinging noses and watering eyes. Or that might be from the sharp bittersweet tang of tears held back.

But I don’t think it’s the fear of the unknown that deters the graduating class most; no, they’ve faced many uncertainties, and they’ve faced worse. What makes the last tiny handfuls of time so painful to let go of is the life that all of them, inevitably, will be leaving behind, no matter if they’re attending college 10 miles away, 100 miles away, 1000 miles away, or halfway around the globe—life will never be the same again.

And so suddenly, they long for their high school days, even those haphazard and sleepless AP season nights, or the 4 am group project voice calls during finals week. All of it suddenly becomes something they can’t let go of when, ironically, back in those long, stressful nights, they ran towards the future, to a life free of college applications, with a fierce determination. Yet when they reach it, the pinnacle of the mountain, and look back, they’ve come a long, hard way, but at the same time it’s been a beautiful and painful and wonderful and sorrowful and splendid journey.

A journey they don’t want to end.

Letting go is hard, so hard, but only a quarter of their lives have been lived, and so on they must trek, to the next mountain and the next and the next. So much will be left behind, both the bad and the good, but so much more awaits them in the future, and so they move on, with the memories made along the way and the part of them forever altered by their past staying with them as souvenirs forever.