“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days, before you’ve actually left them” -Andy Bernard, The Office.

I was driving my little sister to Safeway two weeks ago and we drove down Little Falls and hung a left at the light and onto Yorktown Boulevard. The bus loop came into view, as well as the tall oak trees that billow over people walking into the building. That building is one that I have had the chance to call home for the past three years.

“There’s my school, Willa,” I explained to my soon-to-be four-year-old sister as we came to the top of the hill on a beautiful August evening.

Sometimes I wish I was still four or even fourteen like my younger brother, who started his first week at Yorktown when I began my last. Next year I won’t be here. I could be in North Carolina, or elsewhere in Virginia, or New York or even New Zealand.

I went to bed on September 5 and could already feel myself dreading the next six months ahead of me. School is hard and I forgot about that when I went away for the entire summer. I was relieved on Tuesday morning to find that I felt comfortable.  I knew about the weird smells that seep out from under the doors in the hallway near door eight. I knew that the cafeteria can be overwhelming and suffocating and entirely too cold half of the time. I knew, because I have established  these truths about the building that I have spent the last three years of my life learning in.

The teachers at Yorktown have tested me, and not only in the literal sense. They have pushed me to be better, demanded more succinct explanations and made me a genuine thinker.  I feel prepared to be a part of the world: the vast expansion of mass amounts of people that are all different thinkers and processors. I feel ready and that is largely due to the lessons I have been taught inside the doors at 5200 Yorktown Boulevard.

Although I felt comfortable entering my school, it was like a train full of nostalgia just wrecked me. I entered the doors for the last time on a first day and was warmly welcomed by familiar faces and bright colors. While actually entering my school for the last time isn’t something that I believe to be important in the grand scheme of things, I romanticized the feeling.

The walls of Yorktown High School have seen every single side of me. They have seen me foster incredible relationships with my peers and lose some with others. They have been with me when I have failed tests and have celebrated with me when I have succeeded. My last first day was great. It was incredible.  The building that is built like a huge box knows me. And I know it.  

So when I drive back over the hill in a few years when I come home to visit and I pass the pool lot and the green grass with Willa in the backseat I will still say,

“There’s my school Willa.”

Because it is. And will continue to be.