Editor’s Note: In August 1996 a member of The Advocate & Democrat staff went along with Kayla Millsaps on her first day of kindergarten. On Wednesday, The Advocate & Democrat joined Kayla for the first day of her senior year at Sequoyah High School.

By JACOB WALL

Correspondent

Twelve years ago a child named Kayla Millsaps entered kindergarten at Vonore Elementary and began her educational journey. A little more than a decade later as she starts her final year of high school at Sequoyah High she is a very different young woman from the child that began school so many years ago. Gone is the anticipation and nervousness. Replacing it is the calm of a seasoned student for which the beginning of a school year has become routine.

As she sits in her homeroom class with her peers, she glances over her schedule and sees nothing that worries her.  She is looking forward to her choir class, a class she had been active in for the last three years. For her, this year is just one more hurdle in the way of a college degree; a degree that will possibly focus on some musical discipline.

For her mother Rhonda this school year holds something else. She has watched as the time has flown by faster and faster. She knows that her daughter is about to begin a new chapter in her life. She and her husband hope their daughter will stay close to home, but they think that college is going to be a good experience for Kayla. 

Ultimately the decision of what and where to study is up to Kayla.  The last 12 years have brought her to this point, but only she knows where the next years will take her.