With August 7 coming soon, I have mixed feelings about going back to school.

This will be my last year of high school so I am excited and sad to see it. We spend most of the years that develop who we are as a person in school. We go to school from the age of five to the age of eighteen. I have very few memories of before I began school, but I remember the first day of kindergarten.

I had been so excited and couldn't wait to go… until I got there. As I sat outside the East Three Notch School gate, I started crying because I had changed my mind and didn't want to go. I was scared. I didn't know what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to act or who these people were.

Every year before school starts I dread the first day because after a lazy summer of

sleeping until whenever I wake up, it is torture waking up the first day. I also dislike the first day because that is when you get the rules of each class. The teachers usually take at least an hour in each class to tell the students not to talk and not to eat food. They have other rules but they are really just common sense.

I am sad and anxious to see this year because I have waited 12 years for the final year of school and, now that it is here, I don't know what I will do after it. I have always gone to school so I don't know what to expect when I am done with it.

With this being my last year of high school, it makes me sad to think that I have been in school with some of the rising seniors at Andalusia High School and I don't know some of them very well.

There are so many opportunities with the new school year for the students. To the Class of 2003: "Make this year your best." There is no sense in being pessimistic about the last year of school. It will seem to be over as soon as it starts. Make the best of

it and have fun during the year that so many students have looked forward to for 12 years.