I started a list the other day of all the places I want to go in the world. It is currently five pages long. Each page is for a different continent, their titles being “Europe”, “Asia”, “South America”, “Africa”, and “Other” (because I am not going to dedicate an entire page to Antarctica and I am not too comfortable placing Iceland under “Europe”). There are, as of today, twenty-six countries and twenty-one specific cities on the list. These include Prague, Tokyo, Victoria Falls, Palau, and the Northern Lights.

I may never have enough money or time to visit the twenty-six (and counting) countries. I could, maybe, make it as a gypsy. I could learn Romani and join the ones I saw on the sides of highways in Greece and travel from place to place with them. I could learn self-defense and hitchhike across Europe. I could walk across borders, doing small jobs so I can afford food and to renew my passport. I could do a lot of things, but I probably wont. At a certain age I’ll settle with the handful of wonders I have seen in my life and spend my time finding new things to love about wherever I end up.

We have recently started working on our fiction unit. The hardest part about writing, to me, is deciding where I want to go with the piece I am working on. Many difficult choices come with beginning a work of fiction. There are so many ways to interpret things, so many ways to develop a prompt. Most of the time, I have no idea what I’m doing when I start writing. Of course, after a few lines, I start to get an idea of what I want to do and things start formulating themselves, but it is still a frustrating process. Some days I feel like I’ll never be able to start a piece smoothly.

However, writing is free, and I have so much time to grow, to develop skills and plotlines. Who knows, maybe I’ll still be making things up as I go by the time I’m a senior. Maybe I’ll never see the Northern Lights. Maybe I’ll wake up one day and regret all the things I never did. But I doubt it.

Charlotte Pocock, class of 2019