My name is Emma, and it has been one week since I kissed a boy.

Right after the kiss, it felt like I had just learned to ride a bike. When you finally get the training wheels off, all you want to do is ride your bike. You get home from school, throw off your backpack and run straight for the garage to cruise around the neighborhood. You feel all grown up and special that you finally know how. I wanted to kiss all the boys!

Obviously, I wasn’t going to run around doing that. I still have standards, and there’s, you know, all that stuff I spent a whole semester talking about. But it felt so free to have been kissed. Before, it was this box I hadn’t checked off yet — one of the steps to growing up that I hadn’t quite surmounted.

People always used to tell me being kissless wasn’t a big deal. “It’s just because you’re picky,” they’d say. “It’ll come in time.” Those people are the ones who got kissed under the slide at recess when they were seven years old. They don’t understand what it’s like to feel way too old to have virgin lips.

But now, in my infinite (week-old) wisdom, I can honestly say (and I hate that I’m agreeing with them) that being kissed wasn’t this big, dramatic event that altered the course of my life. It didn’t change my life the way reading the final Harry Potter book or seeing Bon Iver perform live did. It didn’t make me suddenly wiser or better as a person.

I am more than happy to have my first kiss under my belt. It was everything I hoped it would be — spontaneous, exciting and unexpected. But to all the wonderful kissless people out there, those annoying people on their soapbox who said it wasn’t a big deal were right. It’s really not.

I have changed quite a bit since this began, and the kissing was a part of that. But when I look back on the year, my fondest memories are the times I spent with my friends — running through a snow-pour at 1 a.m. while belting songs at the top of our lungs, exploring Columbia’s parks and wildlife with my family and jumping in the fountain in 45-degree weather (Thank God I’m anonymous. All the policemen and policewomen who read this thing would be all over me for that one).

It wasn’t the kissing itself that changed me for the better. It was all the adventures I had along the way — all the life that happened in between.

Thanks to everyone who stuck with me. I had entirely too much fun sharing my blunders with all of you, and I learned so much in the process. I learned how not to offend large portions of my readership, how to talk to guys without bringing up foot diseases and how to inconspicuously spend hours on end striking up conversations with strangers in the laundry room. I can only hope that you learned a bit, too, from all of my many mistakes.

For all you kissless people out there, my advice is to live your life and go with the flow. As Jane Austen says in “Mansfield Park,” “Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.” I’m about to sound like those people I used to despise so, but your kiss will come on its own time. Mine did, anyway (and it had really excellent timing). Obviously, I’m not the most qualified source of advice, but give me a soapbox and on it I will stand.

I don’t want to get all mom-sending-her-firstborn-to-college here, but I’m sure going to miss writing this thing. Sure, I’ll have more time to watch cat videos online and eat the chocolate I still have left from Valentine’s Day (See? My case in point: Kissing someone didn’t stop me from being completely pathetic.), but nothing will replace sharing my weekly adventures with you all. Have a wonderful summer, everyone, and I hope a little lovin’ comes your way like it did mine.