What words do I want to leave the school with? What do I want everyone at BV to know about me before we all leave and I never see a majority of you ever again? Does anyone even care about what I have to say? Will anyone even read this?

Well, for those of you who are reading this, if we’ve never met, my name is Noma. I have two dogs, I prefer crunchy peanut butter over smooth peanut butter and my favorite number is eight. Now you know a few things about me, and maybe whatever BS advice I’m about to drop in the next few paragraphs will have a little bit more substance behind it.

If you aren’t a senior this year, I’m going to tell you something that I’m sure you’ve heard before.

The days you spend in high school will be over before you know it. Trust me. I’ve heard that advice hundreds of times in my life, and I never really took it to heart.

High school can be a hard time for a lot of people, including myself. My own insecurities tend to get the best of me and make my life a living hell sometimes. That’s why it’s extremely important to find something that makes it worth going through.

For me, that something was newspaper. It gave me a group of people I could not only call friends, but family. It also gave me something to be proud of. I’ve learned to not shy away from giving myself credit where credit is due.

If you are a senior, I hope things are going well for you. I hope you got into the college of your dreams, I hope you’re pursuing what makes you happy in life and I wish you the best.

Some of you who are reading have a vivid picture in your head of what that looks like. Maybe it’s attending the Florida Atlantic University to major in marine biology and minor in education. Maybe it’s taking a gap year and seeing the world. Maybe it’s joining the military.

For the rest of you who have no clue what the perfect future looks like, join the club. All I know is that the perfect future cannot be dictated by anyone but yourself.

In truth, this is something I struggle with a lot. I wouldn’t even be in newspaper if my friends didn’t pressure me to sign up on a whim. I ended up in Tiger TV for a year and a half when I randomly decided to apply after Mr. Reeves convinced me that I should. These were both things that I wanted to do. I’ve realized that my problem has always been recognizing my self-worth.

I wanted to do newspaper and Tiger TV, but I needed someone to convince me that I was talented enough to even bother applying.

Moving forward, things are going to change. I can feel it. I’ve learned so much this year about embracing failure, accepting my flaws and learning to put myself out there a little bit more.

After all four years of high school, I still felt the need to introduce myself to you at the beginning of this article because, in truth, I feel as though I haven’t gotten to know many of you. I stay relatively quiet in my classes, I don’t start conversations and I keep to myself.

That’s the one thing I’ll regret from all of these years.

I owe it to myself to step out of my comfort zone in college, in life and in whatever my career ends up being.

For the version of Noma who stumbled upon this column while looking back at old memories  — you should probably go plug your phone in. Chances are, it’s at like 20 percent right now. Oh, and go listen to “Still Fighting It” by Ben Folds. It’ll remind you of senior year and the people who got you through it.