There was a time when I thought high school would never end. A time where I thought I had forever to make the memories everyone else remembered when reminiscing over the “best years of your life.”

But lately I’ve been wondering whether high school truly is the best time of our lives?

I know right now, in this very moment, I’m not sure what the best time of my life will be. I’m too young to know.

But I’m fairly certain that it isn’t high school.

I understand why people may consider high school to be the pinnacle of life. It’s a time of freedom, a time of rebellion, and a time of self-discovery. We can take risks. We can fail. We can change who we are.

But none of those things will stop when high school does. The day we walk across the stage and accept our diplomas isn’t the day we have to grow up. The years following high school will likely be as full of self-discovery. We’ll learn how to cope, how to maintain, and how to formulate our true goals in life in the years that follow high school.

The years after high school reveal who in our lives will stick around. Most of our high school friend group will drift apart and become nothing but a memory. The people we meet in college and the years after high school are the ones who may have a more prominent impact on us. They’ll be the ones who are there when we have our first real heartbreak. They’ll be the ones who are there when we don’t get the job or the promotion we’ve worked so hard for.

When I picture the time of my life, I imagine being surrounded by loved ones who are in my life forever. I don’t picture the kids who feel the need to share their opinions on everything or the others who think that the world revolves around them. I don’t imagine myself dreading getting out of bed every day and forcing myself to walk through the school doors.

The freedom that our teenage years offers us is refreshing, but the freedom our twenties will give us, I imagine, will be exhilarating. We can do whatever we wish, no one to answer to, no curfew to follow. Just us, alone with your decisions and our friends.

That’s what I imagine as the time of my life.

I imagine myself waking up in the morning excited, as I leave my house pursuing my dreams and doing what I love. I’ll wake up one day to the love of my life and kids, and I can’t imagine it getting much better than that. I imagine watching my kids take their first steps being one of the best days of my life.

For now, though, I’ll be soaking in these last five months of my high school career, knowing that it only gets better after I walk across that stage. Life will then be on my own terms, and that makes all the difference. The best years will be the years where I make decisions, I call the shots, and I surround myself with people who lift me up.