The feelings associated with going back to school never really change. Not even now, in this, my 45th year of schooling. You might believe that when going to school is your job, that the approach to it is different, but I assure you, it really isn't. The same feelings of dread are there, as are the same feelings of anticipation. You might think that you would rather do anything in the world more than walk into that first class, that first assembly, that first after school obligation, but you also know that you want to know, in ways that are important to you, what all of those experiences will be like. No, you don't want to know. You have to know. You have to know if you can still connect, if your approach is somehow richer from experience and fresh, if your jokes are still funny, if the students look like they want to be there. Schools are about belonging, which is the source of the great pain they have caused for so many, and you have to know that you still belong. Only then can you try to help others.
Every year, after my first class, I walk into my friend John's office and say, "Well, the old magic is still there." Will it be there this year?
In a way that is unlike any other part of your life, each school year is completely distinct in both its beginning and its eventual ending. While a year structured in any other fashion is almost completely unpredictable, the year built around school immediately makes its potential highs and lows apparent. You know there are events and weeks and seasons that you will simply have to get through, you know that a particular book or school event or special day is something to look forward to. And regardless of what happened good or bad the year before, each year is a fresh start.
Which isn't to suggest that any school year isn't full of its own surprises as well. This year, we will take every student's temperature every day, our budgets have been cut substantially, our dining hall goes "trayless" and gets rid of sugar-based drinks. There's no telling what the impact of these major and minor decisions will be.
But on that first day, whatever you were doing the day before has no bearing on that first day. That was summer, this is school. That was family, this is schedules and classes. That was undisciplined, this is completely structured. That was what you didn't get finished, this is a completely different set of obligations. That was your priority, now this is. When you're young and putting in your years of schooling, it may not dawn on you what a strange, ordered life school is, but when you work it as a career, you know that your life runs according to rhythms that no one outside the profession can understand.
How do you explain to people not in education that at the end of the year, when they think you are excited to have the year wind down, you also feel a deep sense of loss for the students you have spent the year with who are now gone and whom you will never know in the same way again?
A day or so ago, when my daughter came into the house with bags of school supplies, I felt that same twinge of nervous anxiety that I have always felt. The smells, the classrooms, the memories of my own schooling all came back. As she unpacked her high-tech binders and gravitational writing implements, I thought of my own from back then--the notebooks with fresh, crisp pages and nothing written in them, the pack of pencils unsharpened, the crayons unbroken, the plastic ruler still shiny--the products of a society in a high gear of advancement still in their state of perfection. No longer able to arm myself against time with such things, I look forward instead to picking up a stack of as-yet-unread books and the possibilities that may wait inside.
Which isn't to suggest that any school year isn't full of its own surprises as well. This year, we will take every student's temperature every day, our budgets have been cut substantially, our dining hall goes "trayless" and gets rid of sugar-based drinks. There's no telling what the impact of these major and minor decisions will be.But on that first day, whatever you were doing the day before has no bearing on that first day. That was summer, this is school. That was family, this is schedules and classes. That was undisciplined, this is completely structured. That was what you didn't get finished, this is a completely different set of obligations. That was your priority, now this is. When you're young and putting in your years of schooling, it may not dawn on you what a strange, ordered life school is, but when you work it as a career, you know that your life runs according to rhythms that no one outside the profession can understand.
How do you explain to people not in education that at the end of the year, when they think you are excited to have the year wind down, you also feel a deep sense of loss for the students you have spent the year with who are now gone and whom you will never know in the same way again?
A day or so ago, when my daughter came into the house with bags of school supplies, I felt that same twinge of nervous anxiety that I have always felt. The smells, the classrooms, the memories of my own schooling all came back. As she unpacked her high-tech binders and gravitational writing implements, I thought of my own from back then--the notebooks with fresh, crisp pages and nothing written in them, the pack of pencils unsharpened, the crayons unbroken, the plastic ruler still shiny--the products of a society in a high gear of advancement still in their state of perfection. No longer able to arm myself against time with such things, I look forward instead to picking up a stack of as-yet-unread books and the possibilities that may wait inside.Ultimately, going back to school isn't really a case of the blues. It isn't about feeling low, sorry as we are to see the summer end. Like the end of school, it is its own mixture of sadness and loss, of eagerness and excitement, of nostalgia and dreams. And until the distinct moment when we walk into that first class, the year could become anything, absolutely anything.
Conor Oberst's cover of "Kodachrome" is available at hypem.com.
Conor Oberst's cover of "Kodachrome" is available at hypem.com.
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