I briefly considered retiring from my formal education a few days ago. It seemed to me that I had had enough—for real this time. The thought of going back to school used to make me sick to my stomach, literally—it gave me butterflies. But these weren’t any old, normal butterflies—not the kind you find in nature with diaphanous, tissue-thin wings, gently fluttering. Mine were butterflies with wings made of heavy steel, frantically flapping in an eager effort to escape from within me.
Perhaps it was my first grade back-to-school experience that started it all. I was attending a new school in Long Island. My mother left me outside, where all the kids lined up, organized by class, waiting to be escorted into the building. She left me in the line with the first-grade students who were waiting to be herded inside by one of the appointed students from the higher grades.
But when the herding started, it was a mad rush. Keeping up with my group was a herculean task. People from other lines cut in front of me to get across, several lines of students attempted to squeeze through the school doors at once, and kids who knew each other from previous years weaved in and out of lines, engaged in animated chatter. Needless to say, I lost my group of first grade students, and ended up following one of the shepherds who had abandoned his herd and was steadily making his way to his own classroom—surely it was better than being entirely stranded.
Maybe not. I arrived at an eighth grade classroom with my Barney book-bag strapped on tight and light-up sneakers flashing. I looked around—not too many of the other kids had arrived yet, so I didn’t notice that anything was actually wrong. The teacher did though, and politely asked if everyone was in the right place—she looked directly at me, smiling. I had enough sense to suggest that I might not be in the right place. The shepherd, who had unknowingly guided me into the eighth grade classroom, guided me back down the hall, in the other direction, to my real classroom, where my elderly teacher who had worked herself into a fit worrying about where her missing student was. Although unique and memorable, it was a less than ideal entrance and introduction to my future classmates. My hopes of slipping in unseen and unnoticed were wholly unrealized.
First grade was one of the worst back-to-school experiences I ever had, but they continued every year after that. For me the two or three days before the impending return to school were akin to the two or three hours before an appointment for a root canal at the dentist’s office for others. Waiting for it all to begin was nerve-wracking at best. The whole production of buying school supplies and the first-day-of-school outfit, of picking out the right backpack, and of receiving information regarding which class you had been assigned to in the mail, inspired in me a unique kind of sickness.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like to learn, or that I was too lazy to do homework, or that I hated waking up in the morning. Besides, school back then wasn’t about getting good grades, getting to class on time, or getting assignments done. Back then, it was all about having the right lunchbox, having classes with friends, and not humiliating yourself in gym class. So, I never knew exactly where my back-to-school anxiety came from—all I knew was that it came, without fail, every year. It could have been a disguised form of social anxiety, or it could have just been “normal” or “common”—I didn’t know.
I wholly expected the childish phenomenon to disappear altogether by the time I hit high school—but it didn’t. Only my escape plans changed. I offered to stay at home and be my mother’s personal housekeeper, cook, and masseuse free of charge—I think she was tempted.
I’m heading into my second year of college now, but the thought of textbooks and classrooms still sends me back to my first day of first grade. Still, I always end up going back. A week before actually returning to Georgetown, the Lifetime network sent me on a guilt trip when it aired Homeless to Harvard, a story about a girl who fights her way to Harvard despite impossibly difficult circumstances.
My parents were never alcoholics or drug addicts like hers were, and I always had a roof over my head. I don’t have too much to complain about, and I still don’t have any good reason or explanation for my back-to-school anxiety. The elderly butterflies in my stomach disagree, but my mind and my heart don’t. Alas, my logical and sensible side wins out once again, and I write this from my campus dorm, having arrived days before classes start, with all my textbooks in hand, ready for whatever comes my way.
