Students should be striving toward independence, especially seniors who are on the cusp of entering a world that takes no prisoners. Independence does not have to mean rebellion of authority but simply being capable of taking care of ourselves.
Right now we as teenagers have friends, family members, boyfriends and/or girlfriends that we depend on. As soon as we walk across the graduation stage, everything changes; people change, relationships break up and family is forced to allow us to create our own future. Regardless of how and where we end up, we will all have to learn how to be independent at some point.

When independence finally hits us in the face, we cannot be naïve by thinking that the relationships we had with people are going to remain unaltered. Sure, parents will still be parents; they may even try to follow us to college. However friends, boyfriends and/or girlfriends may change. After holding on to those people for so long it is going to be hard to fathom the possibility of them not being there. This is not to say that we should isolate those that we care about, but we need to realize that the list of people we care about could change; allowing change to occur is a sign of growing up.

Teenagers should not be dependent upon their current boyfriend or girlfriend to be the one that they share the rest of their lives with. Newsflash: we are only in high school. We have many more goals to fulfill and experiences to live before committing ourselves to one person. While it is wonderful to have someone that you can depend on throughout the tough years of high school, relationships break and when they do, the people that have pushed away everyone in their life except their significant other are left empty and alone with no one to cling to.

No matter what changes or how we handle the change, we have to get up and live.