The group is me, Paul [Giles], Alayna [Freeman], Ryland [Moss], Reyna [Shirley-Brown], Tate [Truitt], and Thora [Hegarty]. Most of them are seniors, so they’re going to college next year, except for Ryland. He’s going to the National Guard. I’m pretty sure most of them are going to Iowa State, but Reyna’s going to Black Hills. The only other non-senior in the group is Paul, but he’s also leaving next year ‘cause he’s going to Germany as a foreign exchange student. So they’re all moving away, and I’ll be the only one still here [at ADM].

Some of us started becoming friends through band, and then one of my friends introduced us to some people in choir, so then the group became a mixture of band and choir kids. We would all play board games every Friday night, and we even went on a cabin trip together during spring break, which was really fun. 

I’ve been friends with all of them throughout high school, but the bigger group just started this year, so pretty recently. Next year’s definitely going to be a lot different. As a junior, I’ve been with them throughout all of high school, so stepping up to become a senior and not having their support will be a little hard. Obviously, I’ll still text them and talk to them, and I’ll probably even still play video games and hang out with them, but it’s definitely going to be different than this school year. 

We do have a couple more trips planned for the coming months, which will be fun. We’ll still be able to hang out through the summer, and obviously, they’ll come back. Not every weekend, but they’ll still come back. 

Even though this is my main group, I still have friends in other grades, so I’ll just hang out with them more next year. 

Obviously, the seniors who are leaving this year had people leave them as well, so my advice to other people going through this same situation would be “Don’t let not having your older friends (who have already graduated) around stop you from going out and making other relationships and new friends.”