June makes me nostalgic. The school year has ended by now in many places—and soon will in others. Even if you’re not tied to an academic calendar, it always feels like a changing of the guard.

The weather is beautiful, summer barreling in with such authority that it’s hard to imagine winter ever even happened. It’s time to switch out drysuits for wetsuits—or wetsuits for skins, depending on where you’re diving.

I remember those years and that precious feeling of freedom June always ushered in, palpable with the promise of sleeping in and hanging out more.

While institutions of higher education aren’t beating down my door asking me to give a commencement speech, I have an idea of what I’d tell today’s graduates as they set out into the world.

In my last semester at the University of Florida, I registered for a scuba diving class on a whim. Back then, the university offered a YMCA scuba program. (I realize I’m dating myself here—it no longer exists, and I later got my cert transferred to PADI Open Water Diver.)

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For a liberal arts major like me, it was a slog to try to get my head around the dive tables (dating myself again—this was before dive computers were mainstream). And I didn’t immediately take to diving.

The springs around Gainesville, Florida, where we did our open water training, were beautiful but bracingly cold. I was more used to being in a bikini on the beach than shoehorning my body into neoprene to get into the water. But choosing to get outside my comfort zone was one of the best decisions I made.

Before long, I was turning surf trips with my then-boyfriend into dive trips, too, as we traveled everywhere from Fiji to the Great Barrier Reef.

Diving opened me to decades of travel to unique locales (Bunaken, a tiny island in North Sulawesi comes to mind), new friendships with people from all over and a constant kind of education that’s still evolving today—something I couldn’t have begun to imagine as a college kid.

Related Reading: What Can You Do With a Degree in Marine Biology?

To today’s graduates, my advice is simple: Look to activities, cultures and people beyond what you know to help you grow into the person you’re becoming.

That last-minute decision to get scuba certified set a course for what’s become a lifelong passion and even a career selling point I never saw coming for myself. Besides the friendships I formed, it’s my greatest takeaway from those years.

Does pickleball sound wacky? Go with a friend who’s into it and learn why it’s the latest sports addiction. Worried that taking a gap year will put you behind your peers? Do it anyway!

With your dive certification in hand, the world only offers up that many more ways to continue your learnings for life.