When September rolls around, I’m back to work and I’m back to lugging around my yearly supplies to make it through the school year.  I carry the usual binders, pencils, and calculators, but even though they are essential to my work in school, they still put a strain on my shoulders in back. Who would have thought education could be so tiring. I carry my phone, my charger, and my headphones in case I ever want to escape from the school. I carry my wallet, which holds the necessary items that allow me to make purchases and get in some extra practice with human interaction face to face rather than through a four by two screen. My wallet holds a few Alexander Hamilton, a couple of Abraham Lincoln’s, and a majority of George Washington’s. Much of the money that I have in my wallet has been earned through hard work, which for my age is known as baby-sitting gigs. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I’m able to restock my account after that one day a year which is marked on my birth certificate. If I have one of those days and I open my wallet to find only dust bunnies and receipts, rather than those faithful Presidents, I carry snacks, water, and candy to help me get through the day.

During the winter, I still carry around the essential binders and books as the dreadful midterms roll around, but during this season I make sure to stay stocked with hand sanitizer. The germs that race through the school are impossible to escape from. Yet germs aren’t the only things I fight to stay safe from during the year. The most important thing in my bag that I carry year round is not the heaviest, but it is the strongest. It’s my EpiPen. This one needle has the ability to save my life within seconds. Way back when, in the early 2000s, I began to have trouble breathing at the dinner table, that same day I was informed that peanuts were now the new addition to the list of things I needed to stay away from. From that day on, I had to carry around this needle everywhere I go just in case. It is worth the extra ounce that weighs down my bag and it’s worth to add to list of things I carry.
      

Carrying around an EpiPen involves carrying a great amount of responsibility. The weight of responsibility that I carried is far greater than anything else. Being a young adult, I am responsible for my work, my health, and most importantly my safety. Having responsibility ages you in a way that can prepare you for the future. With responsibility, I carry the expectations that I must hold above my head wherever I go. It seems as though sometimes my expectations are held to a higher standard than others because of my skin color and gender. As a woman, each day I try to prove the stereotypes that have been set upon us wrong. Gender should not be thought of as a factor to determine who's better or worse in society, yet sometimes it is. The same goes with my race. Being African American has caused many to think less of me or to feel as though I must follow a certain standard because of the pigments in my skin. It’s thought as though I must not be able to do something as well or even better than a person with a lighter complexion than me. I believe that the expectation that I carry around is much heavier than most and requires a lot of strength and patience.
   

 I must also carry the weight of trust that I’ve built with friends and family. Trust is a weight that if I stop carrying, it won’t feel as though I am lighter, but that I am now dragging along disappointment and distrust. I carry my mistakes but with them I carry my accomplishments. I carry my fears, but with them I carry love. I carry love with protection. I guard it with my life because life is too short to live without having the feeling of loving someone or being loved. With each new moment in life, I carry another memory. With each memory I carry the hope that I will continue to carry along memories that will have shaped me into the woman I hope and want to become.