School’s Out Forever

Today is the first day of school here in Memphis. Although I’m a summer person, I’m also a nerd, so as a kid I looked forward to this day and all the back-to-school rituals. Picking out multicolored pens (the brighter the better) and fresh notebooks that I knew would be full of doodles and notes by the end of the year was so satisfying. I’d discuss the roster of potential teachers with my friends and look through the yearbook wondering who might be in my class. For the last week or two of summer, I got to revel in possibilities, hopes that this year I’d improve my social status and be a better version of myself. As the first day of school fell earlier and earlier, it started to overlap with my birthday, compounding the new year-new me effect. I was a year older, a year closer to being taken seriously, a year closer to finally growing into my looks as adults assured me I would (unfortunately for young-me, my awkward stage didn’t end until I was 30). It was also one of the only times that I got to shop for a few new clothes, which I hoped reflected increased style and sophistication, honed by obsessively rereading old issues of YM and Sassy.

Back-to-school in my college years was the best – all the fresh-start feelings minus the tween angst. I had a full scholarship and parents who helped me with bills. I lived in the dorm with my two best friends, moved in several social circles, and never lacked for something fun to do. I was a good student and loved my classes, my major, and my university in general. Of course, I experienced occasional relational drama that was very important at the time, but overall, it was a charmed life. Going back to campus every August felt like going home, like Daveed Diggs bursting into Act II of Hamilton singing “What’d I miss?!?” And every August, I was one year closer to having a degree and being a real adult.

I didn’t realize that adult life offers few fresh starts, and the ones we get are weightier and more complicated than the first day of school. I miss that regular, scheduled sense of anticipation. But more than that, I miss the assurance of success and advancement as long as I showed up and did the work. I never had to wonder if I was headed in the right direction or getting closer to my goals. Just by existing, I was perpetually moving upward and outward. Every May, I got the satisfaction of checking off another box. I knew exactly where I came from and where I was going.

In adult life, you can chase your own tail for years or decades and not even know it. You can go down the right path and end up back at square one. You can follow all the rules and go unnoticed and uncelebrated. Worst of all, you can have no idea what you’re supposed to do in the first place. Here at the end of my 30s, I still haven’t totally made peace with this loss. I’m a freer woman than I used to be, and though you wouldn’t know it by my behavior sometimes, I no longer believe perfection is the goal of life. I’m learning to embrace the winding road. I have no five-year plan and am not sure I ever will again. But part of me will always long for the structure of school, for the hope and certainty of a brand-new three-subject college-ruled notebook.