6:47 pm - Vienna

I haven’t written in a while because of college applications.

That sentence alone feels like the understatement of the year. These past months have been a blur of essays, activity lists, recommendation requests, reflections, and the kind of internal screaming that’s half laughter, half insanity. My Google Docs have become graveyards of half-formed hooks, rewritten sentences, and personal statements that didn’t quite make the cut. Somewhere along the way, I started to feel like I was writing less about who I am and more about who I could package myself to be. It’s exhausting trying to compress your entire existence into 650 words.

Last Sunday, though, my family stayed a little longer at church to talk with our pastor. We shared life updates—my brother’s upcoming move, my senior year, the whirlwind of transitions that seems to define everything right now. Before we left, he asked if he could pray for us. For my brother, he prayed for peace, fulfilling friendships, and safety in a world consumed with differences. For me, he prayed that I would learn to slow down and live in the moment.

That phrase, “live in the moment”, isn’t new. I’ve heard it plenty of times, usually from adults who can sense how tightly I’m wound about the future. It even lives on a throw pillow in our basement, stitched in looping cursive that feels almost mocking. But for as simple as the phrase is, I’ve never understood it.

How do you live in the moment when the moment feels like just another stepping stone? For as long as I can remember, everything I’ve done has been angled toward some imagined version of myself down the line. Every competition, every test, every essay, every late-night study session, it’s all been an investment. Isn’t that the smart thing to do? To sacrifice now for “future me”? Present me has always been the worker bee, the placeholder. And sometimes, I wonder if in all that effort, I’ve been wasting the very moments I claim to be working for. Maybe my AP Lit teacher was right—maybe youth really is wasted on the young.

Later that day, my brother put on Vienna by Billy Joel. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it. Usually, it was just background noise in the car, something I hummed along to without thinking. But this time, I listened.

Slow down, you’re doin’ fine. You can’t be everything you wanna be before your time.

Because here’s the truth: senior year doesn’t exactly lend itself to slowing down. Everyone calls it the “best year of high school.” Movies and books romanticize it with pep rallies, football games, prom, and a series of “lasts” that are supposed to soften into a gentle, climactic ending. But the reality? It’s weird. Really weird.

It’s a strange balancing act between nostalgia and pressure. One moment you’re laughing with friends in the parking lot, and the next you’re drowning in Common App prompts. You’re expected to savor every second while simultaneously planning the rest of your life.

Tomorrow I’m ordering my cap and gown. Hearing that announcement was surreal. Since middle school, I’ve dreamed of walking across the stage, moving the tassel, closing the chapter. But now that the moment is months away, not years, it feels terrifying. It's what twelve years of my life have culminated into.

I’ve spent so much of my life sprinting toward deadlines, toward decisions, toward some hazy picture of who I’m supposed to be next fall. And in the sprint, it’s easy to forget that this year is slipping away. The cafeteria lunches with friends. The half-asleep breakfasts with my family. The uncontrolled giggles in the hallway. Those things don’t go on applications, but maybe they’re the most important part.

When I hear “live in the moment” now, I think of senior year, not as a stepping stone, but as a season I’ll never get back. Future me will have plenty of time to figure out the rest. But present me only gets one chance to sit in the student section at homecoming. One chance to complain about English class. One chance to feel this strange, bittersweet anticipation of almost being done, but not quite.

Lately, I’ve noticed a feeling I can’t quite name, something uncomfortable but soothing. When I’m sipping hot chocolate with friends before first period, when I’m stifling laughter in class to avoid being sent into the hallway, when I’m chasing after a friend who stole my book—I realize I’m going to miss these small, ordinary moments more than I can imagine. It's funny how you can miss a moment even as you're living in it. It's like feeling nostalgic about something that isn't over yet.

I feel grateful to have so many things I will miss. And I'm determined to truly take advantage of every moment I have this year, every movie with friends, every dance, every competition, every school day. So maybe slowing down isn’t about abandoning ambition. Maybe it’s about letting myself fully live this year while I’m still in it.

Vienna waits for me. And so does today.

Cheers,

emma