The long-awaited senior spring break is fast approaching. Countdowns are on every social networking site and there are countless tweets being posted stating how excited people are to leave for their trip. Packing lists are being made and itineraries are finalized as the departure date fast approaches.

Each year of high school, I’ve come back from my own spring break, eager to hear stories from the seniors who went on a trip with their friends. As soon as junior year spring break passed, I started to talk to my friends, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I’ve never done the whole ‘vacation with friends’ thing. Every trip I’ve gone on was either with my immediate family or my extended family. Don’t get me wrong, those are always fun, but it’s different when you go off with your best friends for a week in paradise.

We are now 14 days out; I can’t wait. I know that week of school before we leave is going to be awful to get through, each day closer to leaving, each day closer to escaping cold rainy Michigan for the sunny beaches of Florida.

But what I’m looking forward to most, more than escaping from Michigan, is being able

to spend quality time with my best friends. With our crazy schedules, we hardly ever get a chance to see each other except on rare free days and the occasional ‘hello’ at the pool when we happen to be scheduled to work at the same time.

This will be a chance to go out and make even more memories with them. They won’t be the last I have with them, since spring break is just the beginning of the end of senior year, but they’ll be amazing memories I can look back on the rest of my life and reminisce on. I want to be able to look back on this trip and say “Wow that was great. How can I ever top that?”

I don’t want it to be one of the last times I’ll be able to look at my senior friends without thinking about saying goodbye to them. After spring break, it’ll be all about AP tests, senior skip day, senior picnic, graduation, grad parties and saying goodbye. Senior, senior everything. The word itself has started to become a synonym with goodbye. I want to be able to have a good time on this trip without worrying about the inevitable goodbye that will come as the three of us head to different states to start the next chapter in our lives.

So I’m planning on making it great.

No talk of graduation, no talk to leaving. Just us and the beach, spending all day in the sand and waves, messing around and doing nothing but still having fun like only the best of friends can do.

I want to stay up all night, not caring how exhausted I am when I get back. Because when I get back, it will all be real. It will be real that it’s all ending. Real that I’ll have to leave. But for now, for this trip, I want it to be just about the now. I’m going to focus on making it the best week of my life.