As I lay stretched out on my rainbow yoga mat, staring at the beautifully shaped ass of my 22-year-old colleague I couldn’t help but have a twinge of nostalgia. For being able to dress however I wanted. For dying my hair and piercing my body parts. For eating anything and everything and suffering no metabolic consequences. Am I old? Or, am I just around too many young people?

Being a teacher sort of ages you. “Ages” isn’t quite the right term. It places you in a professional stratosphere that automatically gives you respect and power–which, feels like something that comes with “age.” Spending your days with little kids doesn’t make you feel old. It makes you feel young, playful, energetic, silly. Yes, you are exhausted by the end of the day in a way that your tiny-human counterparts are not. But, you feel young at heart. And, for the first ten or so years, you are younger than the parents of your students. Which contributes to a second level of power and prestige.

When you work with millennials and listen to their conversations–sometimes beautifully thoughtful and thought-provoking about gender and class; sometimes absurd, about sick dance parties and hilarious hookups; and sometimes offensive, “it’s just that I really thought my parents were going to keep paying my phone bill until I was, like, at least 25″–it gets you thinking about your own world. The small little bubble that you live in–filled with parenting tips and toddler tantrums, meal-planning and grocery lists, bills and savings accounts. Versus the little bubble that they live in–hookups and trash-talking, parent-drama and student loans, friendships ending and new relationships blooming. Certainly there are similarities in our lives–sometimes I come in and Glynis tells me that we are twins, wearing cuffed boyfriend jeans and oversized sweaters. Other times I come in with aches and pains, marriage woes and mom-struggles, angst over why we can’t afford to buy a damn house and we just feel decades apart. Our priorities, our goals, our relationship to the world around us. We are looking at the same sky but seeing very differently shaped clouds.

I read an article a few years ago about how much the people around you impact your life. Sounds obvious. But, this article claimed that we were not only affected by our friends and family but also by their friends and families. That, in fact, we were being shaped by people 3 steps removed from our circle. And, not just affected in an emotional sense but in many ways we are being molded by others: the way we eat, the music we listen to, our outlook on the world, our daily emotional state–whether we are prone to anger or calm, taking deep breaths or becoming anxious. This frightened me at the time. I was teaching with a nasty human who was angry at the world and angry at herself. She seethed with animosity and jealousy, rage and fear. “Oh my god,” I thought. “I am going to become like her.” I’ll start eating snickers bars for lunch and listening to Michael Buble! The horrror!

Of course, it isn’t so simple. We don’t just emulate the people around us, we are affected in subtler but deeper ways than I think we can even pinpoint. I’m not sure how Patricia affected me. Is it her fault that I am more defensive than I used to be? Can I attribute my fear of being alone to Danielle who bought a dog so she would never have to sleep solo? Did Rachel make me a better friend? Did Sara make me more courageous? Is Julie the reason I can stand up for myself? Can I thank Adam for my sense of humor? We are shaped by our circumstances, we are shaped by our families (whether we want to be or not), we are shaped by our choices and our education and our neighborhoods. But where do we end, and the exterior influences that shape us begin?