After four years of high school, your double zip JanSport (which you carefully picked and ordered before the start of high school) followed you to college. It has more stories and insight about you than you might admit. It has carried books from a range of reading levels, prices and purposes; supplies for many short and long road trips; and clothes for sleepovers and weekend trips home. If your backpack could talk, it might say:

You use your hands to talk too much.

If anyone has ever had the pleasure of talking to you for more than five minutes, they know you talk with your hands way too much. Here’s a tip: you don’t need to flash finger guns at the end of every conversation! Quit forcing your prescription strength deodorant to work more, just because you can’t keep your hands at your side. Also, maybe you could realize that when you’re on the phone, the other person can’t see your hands moving. So, again, stop.

There’s a tampon in here that hasn’t been used since you started using tampons

This tampon has been floating around in the front pocket even since you started wearing tampons. Do they expire? You don’t know, and neither do I, because I’m a backpack. But I’ll tell you one thing, you make sure you don’t use that specific tampon, just in case it is expired. Why don’t you just throw it out?

There’s also a ponytail holder leftover from the Jurassic era.

The tampon has a best friend named 'Dirty Ponytail Holder' that you always forget about. You search tirelessly for a way to pull your hair back in the library, but for some reason, you never remove the blackish grey loop from the brackish in the bottom of the front pocket. Wild.

When are you going to clean out the pencil shavings?!

Hey! Speaking of brackish, when in the h*ll are you going to bother washing your backpack? There are pencil shavings from 2010 in every crevice. Aren’t you tired of looking for a pen at the bottom of your backpack and coming up with a fistful of grey sawdust? Washing machines exist, hon.

In the end, a backpack doesn’t offer much outside of its intended use. But still, I have yet to grow out of carrying a backpack, and most people feel the same. Symbolically, it’s a representation of resourcefulness and consistency. It’s not like a high school class ring, which you wear for two to four more years after receiving it, and then take it off one night and forget to put it back on until your fingers have outgrown it. A backpack is not a reminder of youth or education. It is a reminder to keep going. To keep giving it stories to tell; to keep giving yourself stories to tell. A backpack can be both an accessory and an extension. A backpack isn’t a security blanket, but rather an ally in the history you'll make. So, go out, kid -- and make history.