It’s that time of year where the kids all head back to school. What are your fondest memories of getting ready to go back to school? Clothes shopping? Getting your new schedule? Seeing friends again? Or was going back to school the worst?
Lindsay King-Miller: Can I admit that I’m a huge nerd and my favorite thing about going back to school was shopping for supplies? All those crisp, clean notebooks! Those brand-new pens! The assortment of highlighter colors! The Lisa Frank folders! I kind of want to go school supply shopping right now.
Bridget McManus: When preparing to head back to school, my favorite thing of all time was picking out a new trapper keeper. Whatever color or design I selected set the tone for the entire school year.
Anna Pulley: I too loved the fancy pens and notebooks and Trapper Keepers that would immediately and ever after be used to store love letters from my platonic girl friends. Trapper KEEPHER, amirite?
Elaine Atwell: To hell with back to school. My mom would pick out these hideous outfits for me to wear, and the school would smell all weird and clean, and the new teachers all had to try their tough guy act on you, and you had to keep track of what day of the week it was again, and you lost all the good callouses on the soles of your feet. I’m a summer girl.
Daniela Costa: Fondest memories were definitely getting some new gear. A new backpack, pencil case and some awesome extras to fill them up. Of course I didn’t get to change everything up every year, but the great thing about pencils, pens, markers, etc. is that they always needed replacing.
The worst part was that yearly fear that I had forgotten most of what I had learned the school year before during the summer. Fortunately, week one was almost always a refresher!
Erin Faith Wilson: Back to school was sort of a love/hate feeling for me. While I enjoyed shopping for school supplies and seeing my friends everyday, I did not enjoy shopping for skirts that were “two inches above the knee when kneeling” (I went to a strict Christian school and the rules were ridiculous). Due to so many rules to follow and my inner battle to stick it to the man, I wound up in detention or the principals office more than I would like to admit and I dreaded the school year because of that reason. However, my love for playing sports, volleyball in particular, was what helped me stay focused enough to keep me on track-for the most part.
Emily McGaughy: I loved school, actually. I was the kid that was super-involved in tons of clubs and organizations, so I was always back at school weeks before everyone else-painting signs for cheerleading and student council, summer band practice, class officer and National Honor Society meetings, etc. Remember the overly enthusiastic classmate Camryn Manheim played on Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion? That was me in high school, living for student council conferences and Friday night football. Looking back at my teenage self, all I can do is roll my eyes.
Kim Hoffman: I think I must’ve been riding some wave of adrenaline/fear when it came to back-to-school times of year. I was stoked on getting school supplies, especially when I was younger and it involved picking out a trapper keeper, pencil bag, and stickers, not so much as a teenager, because those three-inch binders were bullshit. If I was really lucky, mom would take me to the mall and I would get a killer outfit from 579. I distinctly recall a Scrunchie accessorized my outfit the first day of middle school.
Trish Bendix: High school football games. My dad is a coach and I loved going to watch his team every Friday night. It was even better when I got to high school and he was coaching my peers. He was also a teacher at my high school so whenever I needed a late pass or excuse, I’d just be like “I was with my dad” or have him sign something for me. It was very useful.
Grace Chu: We are talking about schools before college? Yeah, I was ticking off the days until I could go off to college, so I don’t remember too much about high school. I made sure I did well and was involved in lots of extracurriculars, because test scores/number of extracurriculars were directly proportional to the amount of miles between my hometown and the cities of the colleges I wanted to get into. The better the grades and the higher the number of after school activities, the further north into the mid-Atlantic states and into New England I would go! I wasn’t going to rest until I ended up in a blue state with matching blue lips and nail-beds in the middle of winter.
Valerie Anne: I always loved the fresh start the new school year brought. New teachers, new classes, new routine. I overloaded myself in high school-all honors/AP classes, every club I could feasibly fit into my schedule, plus a few more, theatre, two outside dance classes and my local theatre group. I was a procrastinator extraordinaire and my priorities went friends and their drama, actual drama club, extracurriculars, schoolwork. That said, my parents had very high expectations of me, so any and all Bs warranted long lectures and extended punishment. (My parents to this day will talk all proud about how they never grounded me because they never shouted the word, but they took away my internet at every turn and never let me go anywhere anyway, so I would argue that I was grounded my whole life.)
ANYWAY, my point is, by the end of any given semester, I felt wholly underwater, overwhelmed and unable to see a way out. But then the semester would end and the storm would pass and everything was fine again (at least school-wise). Until midway through the following semester. But at least at the beginning, there was hope and possibility. A clean slate. I think that’s what I miss most about school, besides summer vacation. Life doesn’t have a reset button when you get stressed out. But it DOES occasionally still have those back-to-school, have-the-wrong-schedule, can’t-find-the-classroom nightmares.
Ali Davis: Sorry, guys, can’t really talk. I have to grab my frozen water bottle and head to marching band practice. I’m a section leader, which makes starting school with a bright white saxophone strap mark across my sunburnt neck totally worth it. I am once again looking forward to the year with a mixture of pleasure and deep, soul-sucking anxiety. After-school job plus band plus AP classes plus that diabolical quarterly thing where they publicly post the top third’s GPAs by the guidance counselor’s office so everyone can see who’s an even higher achiever than they are I WILL GET ENOUGH SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD.
Also, I need to figure out reasons to run into last year’s French teacher. JUST BECAUSE SHE WAS A GOOD TEACHER. That’s the only reason. Shut up.
Lucy Hallowell: Going to boarding school meant spending a summer at home without friends. My middle school friends were strangers to me or people I dodged in the aisles of the grocery store. Home became a place I didn’t belong and school the place where I felt comfortable. I spent the summers missing my real friends and wishing the days away until I could go back to school to be with the people who knew me. Back to school meant it was time to slip back into my own skin instead of the long-outgrown, too-small shell of the person I used to be.
Chelsea Steiner: I remember going on a family trip to London the summer before 8th grade. While there, I fell in love with a pair of flowered Doc Martens, and I just had to have them. I remember strutting in to the first day of school, rocking them with a baby tee, like we did in the ’90s. I thought I was hot shit, but this was Louisiana and preppy style reigned, so no one appreciated my kickass boots. I wish I still had a pair!
Dana Piccoli: I went to Catholic school my whole life so back to school was all about the shoes. Like Chelsea I was rocking some sweet Doc Martens on the first day of Freshwoman (it was an all girls school, so that’s what we called it) year, I wore my first pair of Docs. They were burgundy, matched my uniform, and my classmates knew I was a real rebel. Pretty much all my new friends had the same shoes!
Miranda Meyer: I am unable to answer this question in the spirit in which it was intended, as I am a grad student and as such there is no back to school. Everything is school. Summer is school. I chose this. I do not really remember The Before Time.
Dara Nai: My back-to-school routine for high school consisted of not buying anything new because why, and showing up on the second day because nothing happens on the first day back. It’s a miracle I got into college.
What was (or is!) your favorite part of going back to school?
