One of my most treasured childhood traditions is running into the local Staples with my mom and younger sister. I would stare at the shelves of notebooks, folders and pens, then pick out my color scheme for the upcoming school year. I would decide before hand what color goes best with what class ("Social Studies feels like it should be red...") and pick out my now infamously known two planners (one monthly, one weekly).
My carefully chosen collection of pens and pencils rested happily in a new pencil case that snapped perfectly into a three-ring binder. Did I want to have five separate notebooks this year, or one five-subject notebook? The possibilities are endless, and by the first day of school, I had completely branded myself for the year with my school supplies. Very dorky, I know.
I can't help but look back on those memories, dating back to my first day of kindergarten, as I carefully choose my new notebooks and place them into my shopping cart along with my chicken breasts and toilet paper at Target. Does anyone in college even still use notebooks beside me?
I ask myself as I stroll a little too slowly for my friends through the "Back To School" section. So much has changed since the days of back to school time, and I cannot help but see my life evolving and my personality changing while my love for these simple bound pieces of paper stays the same.
The history of my first days of school is probably the same as everyone else. You remember the big ones: the first day of Kindergarten, the first day of middle school, the first day of high school, the first day of college. You remember pulling out your favorite new outfit and carefully laying it out on your desk chair the night before.
The feeling of walking up to your bus stop on the first morning, the earliest you know you'll ever be walking to your bus stop, and christening your official seat for the year that would stay the same until the sticky sweaty days of June. You know the feeling of packing up your parents car and driving, sometimes as far as to another part of the country, to receive your higher education. You can mark the progress of your life through first days of school. All of sudden, it comes to stop this year.
Our whole lives, up to this point, have revolved around school. We plan events around school because we let it consume our minds, bodies and emotions. We formed our greatest relationships and memories in those hallowed halls. Every great TV show and movie, like Heathers, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Gossip Girl and Riverdale, take place around receiving an education.
The extracurricular we join at school blossoms into careers, and the friends we make can last a lifetime. During our final year of school, maybe ever (unless you're going on to a graduate school), we aren't just leaving behind the notebooks and exams. We are leaving behind one of the biggest chunks of our lives, one of the things our day today existence depended on and one of the most consistent activities in our young lives. And today, the last "First Day of School" marks the beginning of the end.
If I trace my life all the way back to my first day of school ever, the first day of my PM kindergarten class at Madison Park Elementary School in Old Bridge, New Jersey, I can say some things are always going to stay consistent in my life: my mother will always cry on the first day of school (yes, up until my senior year of college), not necessarily just for the fact that her first-born child is growing up but for the unfiltered education in a safe country she has been able to provide for me by her and my father's sacrifices; the people who genuinely love and care about you will stay with you in your life forever, from those early days of elementary school until your undergraduate career and onward; characteristics of myself that I don't like can be changed through my own work and will power; and that I can achieve absolutely anything I want as long as I go after it.
As the Class of 2018 buys their books and gets ready for this monumental day, reflect back on your academic lives up to this point. Think about those early days of school, the people who have touched you through your educations, those who have stuck around and those who have abandoned you, and how much you as a human being have evolved.
Measure yourself in first days of school, and you'll be so impressed with all of your progress. Pat yourself on the back for making it to this day, and try to soak up as much of it as you can. Pretty soon your academic days will be a thing of the past.
