First Day
Tomorrow will mark the first day of my last year on this college journey. Tomorrow, my roommate and I will wake up and head to our classes, the first of many. Tomorrow is the day that all the other first days of school have come to lead up to.
To the first grade me starting school in a new town, shy but able to seek out those other nervous faces and quiet souls,
To the third grade me, terrified of the likely possibility that I would one day be a scary sixth grader,
To the fourth grade me, who had a nightmare that door to the classroom was a black hole that sucked in flowers, new backpacks, and my tiny body,
To the seventh grade me who walked so so fast from class to class,To the fourteen year old me, wanting to remember walking through the high school doors that first day as if it was the most monumental moment I would have,
To the fifteen year old me, who walked around with a sticker on my back that read “I need to call my mom” because sometimes high school is exactly how the movies show it,To the freshman me, moving into college, a nervous wreck and ridden with mono,
To all of the previous times I’ve started a new school year, we’ve made it through a bunch. Those seeds of new teacher anxieties, homework stresses, shy, new faces, have all stayed with me in my garden of a mind. 
And they have grown up, out of the soil the past gave. And you have all shown me that first days will never stop coming, but that the first days yet to come, have potential, humility, purpose.
So here’s to the night before my senior year. I think I’m ready to create, ready to think.
Ready with all the first days of my past with me in my backpack.~kj