Taeyoo Kim

Yes, that is me. The one near the top with glasses.

To most people, this probably looks like a normal graduation picture. To me, though, it is a picture of friends I have known since the third grade.

I was born in Korea and moved to the United States when I was three. At home, my parents and I spoke only Korean so when I first started school, it seemed like everyone was speaking gibberish. Eventually, the gibberish started to make sense, and I made friends who I thought I would have forever. My father at the time was doing research at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Eventually, my father landed a position as a professor at TTU in Tennessee. I was proud of my father, but inside, I was miserable. I was going to have to leave all my friends behind. In my mind, there was no way I was ever going to find friends like them again.

I was wrong.

I made new friends surprisingly quickly. Some were classmates I invited over after school; others were kids from my neighborhood. By high school, these people had become such a normal part of my life that I barely remembered how worried I had once been about moving. Senior year was probably the best of all. I went out constantly. For a while, life felt complete.

Then I graduated.

Around the same time, my father was offered a position as a professor at UGA. Most of my friends went to college in Tennessee, while I followed my family to start college at UGA. Now I'm starting again, and I have the same fear I had years ago: What if I never find friends like these again?

But I've been wrong about that once before.

Maybe I'll be wrong again.