I’ve been at this for decades now. My life ruled by school districts’ decision when to end school and when to start school. I know not a life without it, without feeling that inevitable anticipation and dread of the first day of school, either as a student, a parent, or a teacher.
The years in which I taught at a community college, the first day of school started over every twelve weeks. With summer teaching, I only experienced a month off from any school duties. Yet that start in the fall (or late summer, depending on the school) is the monumental one, the one that resets the next nine months, the one that dictates time until summer.
This year only feels different from the rest because I’ve become acutely aware of time passing, like I’m in that Nickelback video, the one with the timers above the people’s heads. I accomplished some of what I wanted over the summer, but even without too many lazy summer days, I still didn’t accomplish the big stuff—finish the memoir I started two years ago or complete the rough draft of the next one. Sylvia Plath’s paradox of despising teaching and then wanting to go back to it is my yearly existence. School provides a structure summer does not; school provides new inspiration or profound disappointment. Yet school also sucks up my time, my energy, my creative endeavors, like the Bounty commercial with the mysterious green liquid that absorbs itself into the roll of paper towels. That yearly push-pull of excitement and apprehension occurs this year like every year on this first day of school.
Jittery excitement always tags along on the first morning of school, yet it’s the second day of school I like more. The first day of school is all about setting rules and expectations, going through computer usage contracts and respecting property. Because I teach at a juvenile detention center, I not only set classroom rules, but everything regarding school. I’m the librarian, the IT department (which I suck at), the administrator, the registrar, the counselor, and responsible for all subjects but math. English, my first love, is secondary, sometimes even a nuisance as I try to teach it while juggling 15 other student requests, requests that have nothing to do with English. The mixture of veteran students and new students is equally aggravating—those who have been to JDC numerous times bring an attitudinal excitement simply because they’ve been bored most of the summer and school is their idea of novelty, at least for the first couple of days. The new students don’t want to be here—none of the students do—and some may not have even attended their first day of school in the free world. This is the conglomeration of faces that greet me those first minutes in front of the classroom. I spend the rest of the day bouncing around with no help, trying to start everyone in their individualized coursework.
The first day goes as smoothly as can be, more or less. One student was put on confinement; another student refused to attend school. Yet the honeymoon period of the first couple of days is embraceable, hoping it lasts well into the following week. It may or may not. For me, by the end of that first day, it feels as though I never left for the summer, as if I had never had a break, the day made up of the same old same old no matter how many changes I make. Perhaps it’s the familiar students that never leave. Perhaps it’s the same unorganized chaos that occurs no matter how well I plan. The paradox of desiring change while fearing it sums up my first day well.
With each passing year, the exhaustion I feel once I return home appears to exponentially increase, age bestowing upon me the inability to adapt as I did in my youth. As an introvert, suddenly interacting with people for five hours a day drains my reserves, no matter how much I’ve stocked piled over the summer. Sitting outside with my cat and dog, with my babbling fountains and chirping birds providing a contentedness only nature can, is a stark contrast to ping-ponging from one student to the next, trying to engage the unengageable while trying to appease the high-maintenance, in a musty classroom with barred windows that let in no natural light. My brain has turned to Jell-O by four o’clock, my legs feel as though they have separated from my torso. I have no desire to do anything and lack the ability to do so even if I wanted to.
I crawl into bed early on the first day of school, hoping that an extra hour of sleep will make up for the days’ exhaustion.
And then I return to school for the calmer, more organized, second day of school, as if summer break never occurred, with the hopes that the third day of school doesn’t end the honeymoon period.