I do love the summer. In the beginning, I can’t see from one side of it to the other. I like the texture of those fat bills of time that I clutch in my hands, ready to spend them as freely as Snoop Dogg. Days become hazy with heat and humidity, and those slap happy summer afternoons melt into each other, rendering dates nothing more than an oppressive human construction of the past.

Yet, more than any other point in the year, it is the anticipation of a new school year that fills me with a sense of inspiration. While the New Year in January is supposed to be the time of resolutions, it only takes a fresh schedule to make me think of ways to become a more accomplished, responsible and thoughtful human being. September begins the planning of my complete metamorphosis into an untouchable individual.

At first I hope for little things to change. It starts with the pencils in my pencil bag. They’re new with fat white erasers and full of lead; sixteen of them present and accounted for. I won’t lose them this time, I tell myself. All of my papers are in crisp folders, not creased one bit. I whisper little promises to myself at night, fill my planner with wild goals for the future and say little adages that my father told me like, “If you put things away, you will know where they are when you need them.”

But, soon the pencils will have strayed, and I’ll be searching the ground for utensils that others have abandoned. The papers I turn in to professors degrade to nothing more than crumpled scraps of coffee smudged notebook paper. Oh, and I know right now—September 10—how finals will leave me completely gutted of strength or energy, and even my adages will have abandoned me.

It sounds completely dismal, I know, but I think that all of that planning, all of the goals that I made, some of them achieved and others discarded, were important. It’s wonderful to be able dream, to find ways to create yourself new and better. But I also know that if I did create the Olivia 2.0 that I imagine, she would be completely terrifying. I also think it takes a great amount of faith and honesty to realize that maybe we didn’t need to change as much as we thought we did. Maybe we’re doing all right at the beginning.

The process of self-improvement is a perennial cycle. I look forward to personal growth, and what I can’t change… I choose to call character.