As I prepare for my penultimate “first day of school”, I’ve been thinking about the differences between college back to school and back to school for any year before. Let me preface this by saying I love school, I love learning, and there comes a point in every summer when I am itching to get back. The thing of it is, there’s a different feeling between wanting to get back to middle or high school and wanting to get back to college.

Especially by this point in college, I know the campus. I know the professors. I know the routine. I have friends and know how to make them. I know what to expect from Day 1 of a class. (Syllabus. Reading. Paper. Final. Repeat.) I know my responsibilities. I know the nuts and bolts of my little side jobs. I know my department requirements. I can see the year ahead of me with clarity and I cannot wait. There’s still room to grow and always room to learn. But the wandering is over. I am an upperclassman and I feel like one.

In years past, the first day of school did bring a little bit of dread, a fear of the unknown. In grade school my homeroom would switch and I would spend half my day with a different teacher than the year before. In high school I could already feel the workload sneaking up on me. And of course there was just the atmosphere in comparison to the freedom I had over the summer: an awkward preteen atmosphere where we still have assigned seats for lunch and only recess if we behave, or even in high school where we have to take the “Pirate pass” to leave the classroom. It’s the opposite in college. Complete freedom, essentially. Go to class when you want. Leave campus when you want. Eat what you want wherever with whomever.

I think this year, more than ever, I am excited because I am starting to really find what I like. I am looking forward to my classes because they are classes I want to take. No more Honors/IB level courses keeping me constantly working on some project or other, cramming for tests every week, eating up vocab sheets, barely skimming required reading, feeling burned out by the time the musicals come around (though in retrospect that was the best education I could have asked for). I still have a couple cores left, but that’s fine. The majority of my time is spent in the world of music and communication, where I can call watching TV doing homework.

I always like the fresh start and coming back to my friends. Since I worked on campus this summer (article to come) I feel like I haven’t left, but that’s a good feeling. I love Mercyhurst and am excited to keep learning and growing over the next two years. Only a week and a half to go!