It’s that time of year again. The pencils are being sharpened, the notebooks are being purchased and traffic will be getting worse. That’s right kids! It’s school time!

Now, I wasn’t the biggest fan of attending classes, not saying I didn’t attend, because I did - all of them, in fact. But, being out of college for an entire year has made me a little nostalgic. I remember the stress, the excitement and then the hour of getting lost because no matter how many times I’d been in a certain building on campus I could never find my class ... even halfway through the year.

But, with all of this social media and everyone alerting everyone else that there are getting up early and getting ready for their first class, it makes me a little sad. That was me and I sort of miss it.

I went to college at Virginia Commonwealth University. You may have heard of it, they went to the Final Four last year, just saying. Richmond was a splendid place, filled with trash, violence and a hint of fear from the incoming freshman. I didn’t run into anything too scary, but I have heard gun shots.

I loved it there. Especially when the city would come back alive with the new school year. People would be filling the streets, you could hear music blasting from apartment balconies and it was just like someone had flipped a switch and turned the lights on in the place.

But, I digress. Living back in Leesburg, I always have this feeling I’m still back in high school. Even though I’m 23 and have a job, I still live at my parents, I still drive the same bumper sticker filled Chevy Malibu and I still see everyone I graduated with. It seems like no one ever leaves and maybe that’s what’s scaring me. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t get along with the people I graduated with.

Still every year I want to buy those new pencils, start organizing my binders and smell the new books that I spent too much money on. It makes me think of fall. So what if I want a bouquet of pencils sitting on my desk, I’m a nerd and I love it. Maybe I am that person that goes to bookstores just to smell the books, don’t judge - a lot of people do it!

But, every year at this time, I get a little sad. Thinking back on my time in both high school and college and how it went by so fast. And now I’m just getting older everyday, and realizing that that’s life. As Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while ... you could miss it.”