As my secondary school experience comes to a brisk end, the time for me to come clean has arrived.  I am not British.  You are probably gobsmacked by this news, dearest reader, as was I- given my utter sophistication and wit, but I was in fact born at Cedars-Sinai and have never spent more than two weeks in England.

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that the majority of my teenage years were spent convinced that I belonged in a world somewhere between Hogwarts and Harrods.  My friends and I have been planning our escape to posh boarding schools and royal balls in between our endless study sessions and math classes.  We felt, with an alarming assurance given our American citizenship, that we were meant to live with our jolly friends across the pond.

This disturbing revelation of my American citizenship came after my parents, having been scared one too many times by my One Direction cutouts, told me that by very definition I am African-American, and not of European descent.  I was naturally hesitant to believe them, but despite my inclination for English breakfast tea and fit British boys, I have been forced to come to the same conclusion.  This realization was particularly difficult for me, as I have spent the last four years believing I was meant to be passing the time playing cricket and mingling with my  fellow posh countrymen and women.  However, when my acceptance letter from Oxford mysteriously failed to arrive and my persistent letters to the dean went unnoticed, I was forced to apply to more local universities with my peers and prepare for a future of baseball games and consumerism.

Now, as I move on to bigger and brighter things, I must say goodbye to the land of the setting sun.  There will be no more Hugh Grant movie marathons, no more begging my parents for a summer flat in London and, most painfully, no more British popstars.  Instead I will learn to love American treasures, replacing my Robert Pattinson posters with the likes of American gems like Honey Boo Boo and the Kardashians.

However, after I spend next year abroad, it would be just my luck to start the madness all over again.