I am going to miss Ames High. I have come to this realization slowly as graduation day has inched ever closer, and my excitement at leaving has been overshadowed by an increasing sense of melancholy. Hidden in this melancholy is the echo of realizing that this is the last time in a long time that I will see my friends consistently, of realizing that we will inevitably grow apart. For the first time, I am cognizant of mortality. I am realizing that this is the first and last time I will ever be 18. I am realizing that childhood is over, that I am closer to 25 than 10, and that soon the skin that bounces when I touch it will begin to sag and wrinkle. It is a feeling that ebbs and flows, that will fade by the time the fall reaches me, only to return twice as strong when I turn 25. As DJ put it when we celebrated his birthday last week, “It is speed limit birthdays that are the most traumatic.” I have spent my whole life waiting to turn 18 and leave Iowa. In fifth grade I tucked the dollar bills I earned from chores into an empty orange juice container I had labeled, “Harvard.” To me, life began at 18 in a dorm a thousand miles from home. Since middle school I have lived to leave Iowa. Staying was never an option. I remember the nausea that came in the weeks and days before Yale released decisions in December. It found its roots in the possibility of rejection, in the way I was so sure that I would open the screen to, “We are sorry to inform you.”

I do not regret how I spent high school or middle school. I do not regret it because this is who I am. I am, in the purest sense of the phrase, someone who lives to work. To write, to report, to read, and to share that gift with others gives me an immeasurable sense of joy. More than anything, work gives me purpose. When I feel lost I simply open Youtube to an interview with Toni Morrison and watch the way words spill out of her, and I feel as though I belong to something that is bigger than myself, I feel as though I can do things that are bigger than myself. I do not imagine that I will ever retire, because I do not know what I would do without work. In a way, I think everything I have ever done- the grades, the accolades, the extracurriculars- has been to chase purpose. I think, in part, I have always been desperate to leave Iowa because I could not see a sense of purpose continuing here.

This is not a senior column that tells you to embrace the moment and not to worry so much about a test or a grade, because that is advice I would never follow. This is a senior column that tells you that my life did not magically become perfect when I was accepted to Harvard and Yale. The moment I got into Yale was so beautiful. To open it with Mrs. Seibert, who has been the person who has supported me throughout high school, to have her arms around me as dancing bulldogs and the “Welcome to Yale” screen appeared, was the only way I wanted to have opened the acceptance that was the culmination of years of hard work. To have the other English teachers trickle in slowly, DJ and Mrs. Zeiss and Mr. Brekke and Mrs. Johnson- almost everyone who has ever helped me throughout my high school career, as I wiped away happy tears, was magical in a way. But I spent the winter break following my acceptance trapped in cycles of panic and fear about financial aid. I spent all of January writing an incredibly difficult and emotionally draining waiver petition, and all of February afraid that it would be rejected. Getting into Harvard was something I had never even dreamed could happen. I got butterflies when I walked around campus and realized that the “Harvard Bound” sign in The Coop could belong in my yard, that the campus which tourists took pictures of and ogled at could be my own. But it quickly became a crisis as May 1st approached, as I felt paralyzed by the weight of making the right choice, by the regret that could come were I to choose to, “let go” of Harvard. Even now I sometimes still ask myself if I should have chosen Harvard, even though I know that Yale feels like home.

I still feel wildly incompetent. I am still overly anxious and overworked. I am sure my life expectancy must be much shorter than the average person, because I do not know how my body handles all the stress. Harvard and Yale gave me everything I had ever wanted and worked for, and they could not change that.

I am realizing how beautiful Iowa is. The corn fields that once felt like prison gates now birth the quiet pastel haze that envelops the sun when it begins to fade away. The Main Street we know like the backs of our hands has become prettier, its flowers and shop windows brighter. The winding neighborhoods that I once described in an essay as, “rhythmic suburbia,” have become paths that I cannot stop walking along. 

I miss the 1600 pod with the English teachers that made Ames High feel like home. I miss my piano teacher and the way her hands curve around piano keys as though that is the only place they were ever meant to be. I miss the way my friends laugh, the dumb jokes we tell each other, and the warmth I feel when I am with them. 

If I had to, I would do it all over again because I know Yale is the only place I want to be. But the thought of leaving, what I had dreamed of for 18 years, is now so bittersweet. I am realizing how much I am leaving behind, and in turn, how much I have built here. Maybe, if I had to do it all over again, I would choose to love Iowa a little more.