As I sit in my living room the night before graduation I can’t help but feel an overwhelming amount of emotions flood my body. Tomorrow I graduate University. Wow. I remember my first day of University just like it was yesterday. My first class was an 8 am Microeconomics lecture and I remember not making any friends and thinking to myself “this is gonna be hard”. But as my first week progressed I met some great people and realized we were all in the same boat. In our Marketing class, we were put into groups for a project and this is where I met the person I now call my best friend. Amanda, thank you for being the best study buddy, workout partner and best friend a girl could ask for. I honestly don’t know how I would’ve made it through these past four years without you. To all the other friends I met through classes, group projects, volleyball, at athletics, DECA, case competitions, whether you were in my year or not, thank you for making my four years amazing. University is a rough time for all of us but the people around you make it bearable. If I attempted to shout out everyone who I’ve met this would be a longgg blog post. But I hope you know who you are ❤

The past four years have probably been the best years of my life, as cliche as that sounds. But I’ve learned so much about myself, the world around me and of the course the business industry. I had opportunity to travel the world, work on amazing projects & events, meet people from a variety of backgrounds and simply learnt about new things every year.

As graduation season was approaching I kept hearing a lot of people say they didn’t want to go that they’re only going for their parents etc… Am I THAT nerdy that I’m super excited about graduation? I mean yes you’re going to sit through a lot of names of people you’ve never seen before but there’s so much more to it. I see it as the final hoorah. We just spent that last four years of our lives working towards our degrees and diplomas. Those all-nighters didn’t go to waste. Every semester, every school year we got one step closer to getting that piece of paper that says we accomplished all the requirements needed for our program. We’re celebrating the fact that our hard work was worth it. We did it. It’s also a time to cheer on your friends for doing the same because I don’t know about you but I’m super proud of my friends graduating with me this year. And just think, this is your only undergraduate graduation (unless you decided to go back do another undergrad but let’s be realistic). This is a one-time thing. We’ve just reached a huge milestone in our lives. Many of us are going off to the real world, some of us are going back to school and others are still trying to figure out what they want to do.

During my final year at University I kept pointing out the “lasts”, the last undergraduate midterm I’ll ever write, the last accounting exam I’ll have to deal with, the last group presentation, the last all-nighter. But what was pointed out by a friend is that although we have many “lasts” right now it also means we’re about to have many “firsts”. As we embark on the next point of our lives, let us look back at our University careers and be proud of what we accomplished and look forward to whatever the future has to hold.