Adjusting to a new school year
As a kid, I always hated the first day of school. It meant the death of freedom, an end to staying up late and sleeping in even later. It meant that I had to follow a schedule set by somebody other than me.
Even though I was a decent student and attending classes wasn’t the worst thing in the world to me, I still got nervous aboutmynewcourseload.Common questions that might bounce around my head went something like this: “How I’m gonna handle algebra 2 if algebra 1 was so hard?” or “How I’m even going to find my geography classroom?”
Most of all, though, I would worry about the social arrangements of any new school year. Who you were assigned to sit next to could really have a major impact on the semester. If you happened to get lucky enough to sit by a friend, the class you were in would be so much better. On the other hand, if you had to sit by that kid who never talked, it could make for a very long semester. It was especially bad if you were surrounded on all sides by kids you considered to be the opposite of friends. This happened occasionally to me, and it made me dread going to certain classes. My high school used last names to organize kids into homerooms, which put me in a class full of Olsons, Nelsons and Magnusons. Even though I never became friends with most of these people — or said more than two words to a lot of them — I did happen to meet my future college roommate, John Nordstorm, in homeroom. I count that as a victory for alphabetized seating arrangements.
Still, most of the time I seemed to be situated as far away as possible from those I considered my closest friends. When electives were offered, we’d at least have the opportunity to sign up for the same classes. If the teacher was one of the cool ones, you could choose your seats and didn’t have to worry about getting shoehorned into some corner of the classroom where you could barely make eye contact with your buddies.
Of course, if you were lucky enough to get into a seating cluster with friends and acquaintances, you had to avoid abusing the privilege. More than once, I was exiled to a different part of the classroom because the teacher determined it was too much of temptation for me and my classmates to chatter during class. Learning to stop talking at exactly the right moments so the teacher didn’t notice became a science I perfected over years in school.
Starting a new school year is a bit like moving. You have to get used to new surroundings and new faces, but eventually you settle in. I remember going through that process every year, and even though it wasn’t always fun, it’s better than not having a summer break, right?
OUT FOR A WALK
KEVIN O’BRIEN
EDITOR
