After three and a half years of high school that have both stretched on for all of eternity and gone by in a flash, I am quickly approaching the second semester of my senior year. I’ve already had my ‘last’ first day of school, Black Out, Homecoming, etc., and this coming Friday might be my ‘last’ high school football game (although I really hope it isn’t).

With much thought, I have decided that I am not going to this Friday’s game at the Baylor Stadium in Waco. I have an academic UIL meet the next day where I have to be at the school by 7a.m., and I do not want to have to stay up that late the night before. In my head that’s reasonable. But the second I started telling people when they asked me if I was going to the game there was practically national outcry. “But it might be your last football game EVER,” my friend’s mom shrieked.

Though I am aware of this fact, I’ve decided that I’m okay with it. Because there is so much emphasis on everything from Homecoming to yearbooks to class shirts being your ‘last’ time to do something, there is this added pressure to go ahead and dive headfirst into it, at the risk that you’ll regret not doing it later on in life. Apparently when I’m on my deathbed 80+ years from now, one of my biggest regrets in life will be not driving down to Waco the night before I have a UIL meet to cheer on my high school football team. So I’ve decided to call complete baloney on the whole ‘last’ system.

Who cares if it’s my ‘last’ high school football game ever? I have been to plenty of high school football games over the past four years and they honestly have all blended together. It’s not like after I graduate I can never attend a high school football game again, and I have college football to look forward to now, especially because I will attend an SEC school.

As seniors, we have our futures ahead of us. Soon we’re going to be headed off to college, trade school or into the work force. Sure, high school has been great, but it’s far from what we’ll consider to be the best time of our lives. This whole ‘last’ thing is just unneeded pressure to hang onto a present that we’re about to outgrow, making it our past.

We shouldn’t feel the need to spend the precious time we have left at home—and our own money— on something just because it’s our ‘last,’ and we shouldn’t feel bad about it. Instead we should focus on how many exciting ‘firsts’ we’re about to experience in the near future. We’ve got the whole world in front of us, and ‘lasts’ are about to be a small fleck in our past.