I recently took my senior portraits (not the ones that go into the yearbook, but the artsy ones), and my mother posted a picture that she took on Facebook. The caption was along the lines of “She cleans up!”

My favorite comment is my mom explaining that we were taking my senior pictures, followed by “(hard to believe she is AARP eligible).”

I think it was with that joke that it hit me. We, class of 2016, are seniors. Some of us will be legal adults this year! To the rest of the school, we seem so old. Our time is near, and soon we’ll “go off to the war” (what I like to call “graduate”). We are having to fill out papers for our senior quotes and senior bests, and I don’t know about you, but it feels weird that we’re here.

Of course, to the alumni and parents and other people who have already graduated from high school, we are still fetuses.

In the midst of college apps and the piles of homework, we need to remember that we are now seniors and have pseudo-adult responsibilities, because soon we will be actual adults.

But, we aren’t there yet. We are still kids!

The number one thing that I’ve been told by older people when talking about the stress of school is to enjoy my youth. We can only be young for so long, and it would be a shame if we wasted it to try and get into the “perfect college.”

Honestly, it would be counterproductive to spend 18 years only doing what is deemed “impressive” for college applications instead of spending that time actually doing what we want to do. And for what? Around four more years of school, which, while some may say that the college you go to determines your future, actually isn’t anything too drastic. If you take a gap year, start with junior college, or just go to a trade school, it’s not like you’ll spend most of your life sleeping in a gutter.

Don’t get me wrong, education is important, but it shouldn’t be something that puts your well being/health at risk.

My fellow seniors, we all know that we are stressed, some to the point where they’re driven to apathy (I know I am). We have a lot of responsibilities, and it’s true that it’s hard. We are expected to have the time to complete our masses of homework, get good grades, play a sport/participate in some sort of extracurricular, have hobbies, have a healthy social life, a job and a romantic relationship. This is outrageous! This is too much for a human, and even more so for adolescents.

In answering the question that the title of this article poses, no, we are not ready to sign up for AARP, because we still need to enjoy our youth.