Chapstick, Chapped Lips and Things Like Chemistry.

I have been a student for 18 years.

This means 18 years of sharpening pencils, trading erasers, passing notes, lunch hour, markers, tape, glue, construction paper, posters, book reports and papers. For 18 years I have walked school hallways, high fived friends, loaded up my binders with pictures and poetry. In 18 years, I have written a novel's length worth of witty comments in the margins of my books. I have signed my name as

Nikki W

Nikki C

Nikki A

Nikki M

Nikki P

Nikki I

Nikki S

Nikki J

and of course, as Nikki Hansen, all on the left hand side of my notebooks, near the coil that holds the paper together. In 18 years I have collected numerous, hilarious drawings of people that I know or knew. Phone numbers. Snide comments. Lightbulb moments. Impromptu poems. 18 years of who I am, how I've grown lives in writing around the edges of my notes.

Oh yes. Notes. For 18 years I have taken notes. The alphabet, times tables, sentence diagrams, mice and men, geometric shapes, musical theory and happy daggers. For 18 years I have had a notebook as a steady companion, with little pockets to hide secrets and house schoolwork in. For 18 years, I have had a fairly predictable routine: waking up, packing my back pack, going to school, doing homework.

I cannot remember life as anything but a student. Sitting in desks, staring at chalk boards...then white boards...overheads, then projectors. A place to put my lunch and hang my coat. My best friends sitting next to me, keeping me distracted from the schoolwork I love almost as much as I love them.

Naturally, the fact that in May I will formally leave the structure in which my whole life has taken place scares the hell out of me. Or maybe it scares hell into me. I'm not sure which.

Either way, I feel a little ridiculous. Every time I pick up my green four subject notebook, I get a little emotional. I know that it is the last notebook I will own as a student seeking some form of degree. I can see the bright light shining - telling me that, soon, the page will turn and there will be no more curled edges. No more notes to take. No more "I like your pen you" or hearts being drawn, no more swirls or butterflies or "hi's" - no more phone numbers being scrawled across the top of the pages, no more drawings of teachers, cats, bff's holding hands. No more pictures of farmer dan, who has appeared on the pages of my notebook for a steady 10 years. No more snarky remarks written to the person next to me, and no more critiquing the things I like or dislike about the ways my teachers teach.

There will be no more teachers.

I will be the teacher.

I will watch the girls and boys scribble on their notebooks - songs and notes and awful pictures of me and everyone else they know. Poems and signatures of names they hope they never have to change, or someday get to have. I will watch them doodle, and I will let it happen, knowing that they only get to be students for so long and that life is being written on those pages.