Letting your daughter live with friends in a large, off-campus house could end in financial and personal heartache, Dr. Wes advises. Consider some alternatives, including just telling her no.

Kyra: Instead of writing this final column, I took heavily filtered selfies with my pet cactus. I put a bunch of tee shirts on the blades of my ceiling fan and watched them fly off when I flipped the switch. I did a handstand for the first time in four years. Call it procrastination, but I just couldn’t type a farewell to something I’ve loved so dearly and looked forward to every week of the last year.

For 12 months, as my emotions went up and down like a pogo stick, Double Take was a reassuring constant. After having a bad day, nothing was more comforting than curling up on my bed and writing about love, ADHD, or videogame violence. I researched weed, school funding, breast cancer, sexting and a whole bunch of other topics I’d never taken the time to really delve into before. I gave out a lot of advice that I later realized I should have given myself. Former co-author Ben Markley said it best in his goodbye column, that the work of an advice columnist “might potentially be the most hypocritical job ever.”

Double Take has given me a little taste of journalism’s real world, with its regular deadlines, tough topics and critical online commenters teaching me to better accept my (many) mistakes. The first time I caught an error in my half of the column in the paper, my embarrassed tears made the ink bleed. I showed a friend. She was like, “Yeah, that’s a pretty stupid mistake, but people make mistakes.” That stuck with me. Over the course of the year, I haven’t learned to care less about things like that, but to care differently and to focus on improving instead of trying so hard to be perfect.

As I pass the torch to Gabe McGee, I urge him to keep that in mind. It’s not that I think he’ll make too many errors. I met Gabe during the contest, and was impressed by his meticulous attention to detail and his professional, but gentle, way of carrying himself. I have no doubt he’ll bring consistently strong, insightful advice to his readers. I will be one of them during my first year at Mizzou.

Wes: The imperative “Become what you are,” is often attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche. It was among his favorite quotes and fits well into a philosophy built on transcendence. But the words really come from the Greek poet Pindar, who said much more poetically, “Become such as you are, having learned what that is.” We forget sometimes as adults that the whole purpose of adolescence is for our children to become who they are, not who we were.

This week we say goodbye to a whole group young philosophers, leaving home to embark on that journey of becoming. Statistics tell us that that while most will succeed, quite a few will return, shaken, to reassess and start over again. Nietzsche also said, “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” There’s a reason Kelly Clarkson took that title to No. 1. The message resonates deeply with teens and young adults.

Kyra Haas will be among those who truly become who and what they are. How do I know this? Anyone who has really known Kyra can see it. She’s not only been my co-author this year, but my intern and my friend. It has been a rare and valuable experience. So, I know.

Over the years in Double Take we’ve talked of The Three E’s: Ethics, Empathy, and Excellence in behavior. If that concept ever gets a Wikipedia page, Kyra’s picture will be front and center. She cares so deeply about the world and those in it that she gives of herself freely to bring about their greater good, even at personal sacrifice. Her sense of personal and social justice exceeds that of most adults I’ve known. She enacts it daily, always the peacemaker, while keeping at bay that haunting fear all teens have that the world really isn’t very fair or even safe, while encouraging those around her to believe that maybe it is.

Most of all however, Kyra will become what she is, and in the process make all of us proud that we knew her “back in the day,” because whether she sees it or not through the tearstained ink she’s left on our pages, Kyra is strong.

As we say goodbye this week to our newly minted young adults, let’s set aside our own anxiety at their departure and offer instead the encouraging words of songstress Sara Barellies to “Show me how big your brave is.”

— Wes Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP, is author of “I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not: Successful Living with ADD & ADHD.” Learn about his writing and practice at dr-wes.com. Kyra Haas is a Free State High School senior who blogs at justfreakinghaasome.wordpress.com. Send your confidential 200-word question to ask@dr-wes.com. Double Take opinions and advice are not a substitute for psychological services.