Alas! It’s already August and summer is almost over! For most of us, this time of year dredges up memories of a certain day…
It’s a day you dread all summer long, counting down the hours until you’re forced to returned to locker-lined hallways, homework, gym class, and text books. The first day of school was always filled with anxiety yet excitement. It meant the return of old friends and old routines. The feeling you got on that first day of school is unlike any other in your life.
Whether your school years are still ahead of you or far behind, let’s take a nostalgic romp back to that first day of class, reminiscing about those tragically-sweet school memories.
10 Things That Will Totally Remind You of the First Day of School
1) New Text Books
New books have that clean, crisp smell, like knowlege fresh from the laundry, and will forever go hand-in-hand with the first day of school.
In order to preserve the textbook’s pristine freshness, and avoid fines for damages, you ALWAYS had to wrap them.
The more economical students wrapped them in recycled paper grocery bags, with every inch inevitably covered in doodles by the end of the year.
But the flashy kids covered them in neon contact paper or photo collages of their summer vacation- to prove to their fellow classmates during those cold winter months they indeed had a tan once.
2) The Class List
In many schools, elementary kids find out who their teacher is and who their fellow classmates are the week before school starts.
This was a time of great turmoil as child. Your whole year was determined by this one list. If your best friend was in another class- your life was over. If you got the nice teacher who awarded candy- you won the lottery.
During those middle school, high school and even college years, discovering your crush was not in any of your classes on the the first day was akin to a shakespearean tragedy.
3) The Perfect First Day Ensemble
Besides what you wear on your wedding day, no single outfit undergoes as much pressure and scrutiny than what you wear on the first day of school.
As young students, most of us believed what we wore on the first day of school branded us for the entire year. Am I laid back? Am I a tom-boy? Am I stylish, goth, punk? No version of yourself was off the table.
So weeks before school started, you would scour every store in the mall (because it HAD to be new) for the perfect outfit to debut. You would envision yourself bursting through the double doors, strutting to your locker, turning heads and breaking hearts.
4) The Backpack to End All Backpacks
The search for the perfect backpack usually started midsummer. It was crucial to find the most stylish yet sturdy bag- one sure to get you through the entire year.
It was a plus if there were plenty of pockets to hold things like chapstick & funky erasers. Some even came with matching lunch boxes!
For students in highschool and college, the backpack took many different forms- from over sized purses to leather messenger bags.
5) School Supplies
Remember going into any store around the end of July, and stopping in your tracks when you notice clerks stocking up the school supply aisle? It was the first sign of the end of summer…
…and the beginning of the school supply scavenger hunt, because no single store had everything you needed on your list. So those last bittersweet days of vacation were usually spent being dragged from Target to Walmart and back.
Going to school that first day loaded up with unsharpened pencils and binders with all the rings in tact was always exciting. You had aspirations. You were going to keep everything organized and neat.
By christmas all your highlighters will be dried up or lost, and your locker a disaster zone, but for one brief moment, on that first day of class, your new school supplies represented a bright future where all your homework gets turned in on time and essays are written in pen without a single mistake.
6) The Only Day You Wake Up Early for School…Ever
Trying to sleep the night before the first day of school was always a stomach-churning, insomniac battle. If you did manage to get a few hours of sleep it was usually filled with strange, anxiety driven dreams.
And without a doubt, you always woke up hours early, like a twisted christmas morning, and just lay there staring at the ceiling trying to fall back asleep.
Though you woke up early, you somehow managed to be running late because of the extra effort you put into making sure your hair was perfection.
7) F.O. G.LO- Fear of Getting Lost
Even though you mapped your locker’s exact location and charted your rout between classes, the fear of getting lost (or worse- sitting down in the wrong class) caused a great deal of anxiety on that first day of school.
Even if you’d been going to that school for years, everything felt backwards coming back from summer vacation.
But it wasn’t the place that had changed, it was the people. Over the summer everyone had grown a little taller, gotten braces, or dyed their hair.
The school you had once known was now a strange land full of strange people, making the first day of school feel like you were lost in a jungle.
8) Summer Recaps
Reuniting with friends was the only saving grace on the first day of school. When you were young those 2 ½ months apart were like an eternity.
The halls were filled with chatter, hugs and laughter between friends. Lunchtime flew by in a whirl of stories about summer trips, parties, and horrible jobs. Even if you had hung out the whole summer, there was something different about seeing your friends back at school.
You knew you had a long year ahead, but on that first day everything was okay, because you and your pals were back together again.
9) New Kicks
Picking out the right outfit for the first day of school was one of the most important things in the world when you were younger, and the most important part of the ensemble was the shoes.
It was crucial that they be comfortable and in style. The shoes you wore on that first day said a lot about you.
It was even more crucial if you wore a uniform. Sometimes shoes were your only form of expression. Therefore your kicks were the #1 aspect of your life.
10) Utter and Complete Exhaustion
Remember how the exhaustion hit you the moment your backpack dropped to the floor upon returning home from the first day of school.
The high from the anxiety and excitement kept you going until the crash. You had little to no sleep the night before, ran around trying to find your classes all day, and you forgot to eat lunch because your were talking to friends.
And the exhaustion was compounded by the fact that you had to get up and do it all again the next day and for the rest of the year.
