In one month, I will be walking across a stage in my cap and gown and graduate from college. 

It is a moment I have been working towards for years, yet as it gets closer, I find myself looking backward more than forward. The nostalgia comes in waves — sometimes small and soft, sometimes stopping me in my tracks — and it pulls me all the way back to the beginning.

Before student loans, dorm rooms and finals, I think about kindergarten, when school meant half-days and learning felt more like magic. I remember learning sign language with my tiny, clumsy hands and finger knitting yarn into something that barely resembled a scarf, but it still felt like an accomplishment.

Everything was new then. Everything felt big. The future didn’t stretch out in front of me the way it does now: it simply hovered somewhere far away, too distant to imagine. 

Elementary school feels so warm in my memory — a blur of waiting in long lunch lines, practicing multiplication tables, losing my place during silent reading and feeling proud when I didn’t.

I remember the chatter in the hallways, the playground politics, the teachers who made me feel smart and those who were a little intimidating but pushed me anyway.  

We had classroom jobs — like line leader, caboose and paper-passer — and they all felt important. I remember the sound of pencil sharpeners whirring, the smell of crayons and the joy of book fairs, where picking out one new paperback made the whole week feel brighter.

I remember silent reading time, when I would lose myself in stories and forget about the real world until the teacher called us back. 

I recall the comfort of routine, morning announcements, lunch and the steady rhythm of a school day that told us exactly where we needed to be.

It’s strange now, standing so close to college graduation and realizing how far away those days have become. 

Back then college was an abstract word adults used, something that applied to my friends’ older siblings or people on TV. Not to us. Not yet.

Even high school felt distant then. The idea of leaving my hometown wasn’t something I could imagine.

But here I am, imagining it in reverse. Remembering the simplicity of elementary school makes the present feel both enormous and fragile. 

I am proud of who I have become, the work I’ve done and of the student I grew into. But I miss the earlier versions of myself who lived in a world where college graduation wasn’t a real concept yet. 

I miss the kid who thought learning long division was the hardest thing she’d ever do.

In a month, I will take that walk across the stage. But right now, I’m walking through years of memories, revisiting classrooms that feel smaller in hindsight but enormous in their impact.

As I step into what’s next, I am holding those early years close.

Stephenson can be reached at [email protected].