If there were any adults that ever said to you “senior year would be smooth sailing”, they lied to you. AP classes, tests, exams, college applications, you name it, made senior year stressful. However, there are some high school moments that make all the studying worth it: Homecoming, Senior Week, graduation, but most important, prom.

Prom night is the night that all seniors have been waiting for since their freshman year. It’s like a little reward you get for making through your senior year and it is an experience of a lifetime, but that doesn’t mean prom isn’t stressful. Sure you get to dance and have the time of your life but no one ever talks about the most stressful part: the planning process.

Prom is planned at least three months ahead. Once you get to a month before prom, it’s time to do all the hard work. You need a dress/tux, you need shoes, you need to set appointments to get your hair done, nails, makeup and all the other things to make you look absolutely stunning. This, again, is based on your budget. I don’t know if you have realized by now, but prom is quite costly.

Anyway, finally it’s the day of prom, and you have everything set. If you are going to prom with a group of friends there is going to be at least one person who has an agenda for everything happening each hour. What time to get ready, what time to take photos, what time to go eat, what time to show up at the dance. And if by some magical manifestation you were on time to everything based off the agenda then good for you! And if you don’t… well it was bound to happen, we’re 18, we’re never on time. Finally, the stress is over and you drive up to Moody Gardens, invitation in your hand and walk through those doors into, what you have been waiting for forever, The Garden of Lights.

For those of you that don’t want to go to prom because you “thinks it’s lame” or “don’t have an interest in school dances”, I wont judge. You do you. However, I strongly recommend changing your mind. You don’t go to the dance purely to go to the dance. It’s about spending the night with your best friends before you all graduate and go off to college. You don’t even have to spend money on all of that. Just show up in your favorite fancy outfit, have some punch, laugh, dance, sing, and enjoy it. You’ll never get to do something like that again.