Today is my last first day of school.

Even typing those words feels foreign, slightly unsettling, and incredibly exciting. Everything I've ever known is about to change. I've spent my entire life traveling from classroom to classroom, trying to gain as much knowledge as I can before heading into the abyss (aka "the real world"). Everyone around me keeps telling me how grown up I've become. They tell me that everything is going to work out and that I'm going to be a big star chasing after my dreams. Over winter break, I believed them all too. The future seemed like a beautiful hazy dream. But now that I'm back in my college town, in my tiny apartment, the future seems far away and right in front of my nose all at the same time. And right now, it doesn't really feel like it's all going to work out. The hazy dream is quickly becoming a weird reality that I know is coming but still can't see clearly.

Currently I'm sitting in my bed listening to jazz piano, drinking coffee, and pondering what life has in store because I couldn't sleep. Really, this sounds like the makings for quite the existential crisis that would happen in the movies or books. Honestly though, I think I deserve one. Maybe that's just the millennial in me talking, but I think that this day warrants a tiny crisis. Nothing too extreme but an existential crisis just large enough to make me stop and take stock. Everything is about to change. And no matter how hard I try, I can't stop it. So I ask myself a few questions in between sips of coffee. What do I love about my life right now? What do I want to change before I leave this place? Am I ready to leave? Remember who you were when you came to this place? Have you changed for the better? Are you happy with the person you've become?

And you know what? I am really happy with who I've become! It's been a long road to get here with many nights full of doubt and tears. There was a time of my collegiate career in which it actually felt like the life was being squeezed out of me. My classes were draining, my emotions were eating me alive, and bit by bit I felt the light inside of me dim. So often I thought that I was never going to succeed and contemplated quitting. But every time I felt like it was impossible to move on, I picked myself back up and a took a step forward. Sometimes the steps were so tiny I barely moved at all. But the point is that I moved. With each step that little light inside me grew until I arrived here - a person who is proud of everything she's accomplished but having a tiny existential crisis while listening to jazz, wondering what the consequences would be if she stayed comfortably right where she was and wondering if anyone else feels the same.

But we can't just stay exactly where we are. Where is the life in that? This last semester will bring many bumps in the road. There will be laughs, tears, and lasts. And life after that is about to be the most terrifying, wonderful, exhausting, incredible time of our lives! Maybe we don't know what we're going to do or where we're going to go. Or maybe we know exactly what's happening after graduation. Who cares? Even though it's scary, we must keep doing what we've done for the past four years of college: pick ourselves up, kindle that light within ourselves, and move forward.