Nichelle Week 16 - The First Day of School (and the rest of our lives)
The First Day of School (and the rest of your lives)
This is my first year as a LINK leader at our school. For those who may not know, LINK leaders supervise the freshman orientation and allow for a seamless, anxiety-free transition for rising freshmen. As I was filling out the application, I pulled from my own experience as a very introverted freshman to convey the exact reason I had wanted to participate in LINK in the first place.
The first days of school are often the best, in my personal opinion, even overshadowing the warm, sunny days as the school year ends. The first days of school are often marked with a sort of anxious excitement—and a bit of exhaustion as you fall back into the early morning routine warranted by school. I love the preparation for the first day back: carefully arranging your supplies into your backpack, picking out the very best clothes for your outfit, and carefully styling your hair. Obviously, after a couple months in, appearance almost always falls on the back burner, but there is a period of time where it feels as if everyone is dressed to impress.
The first days of school are often your most social. Maybe you got lucky enough to be put into classes with your already established friends, or maybe you had to fend for yourself in the pursuit of finding new ones. Regardless, it is almost characterized as a time of genuine excitement, of hope for a new year, a better year, than every other year that has come before.
Hi Nichelle! You're so right about the first day of school and the nervous anxiety it brings. I'm pretty sure that on the first day of Junior year, I woke up at 6 am because I was so excited. The next day (and every day after that), I could barely get up by 8. I feel like this is because the first day brings a promise of a better year, better friends, and better memories. It holds the hope of a better future, encapsulating so many possibilities within a 6-hour school day. The first day of Freshman year takes this and multiplies it tenfold. Instead of promises of a better school year or semester, the first day of high school holds the hopes and infinite of the next 4 years of your life. Our last day of school is in a week, but nothing will compare to the excitement of the first.
ReplyDeleteHi Nichelle! This post has definitely taken me back to when I was a timid, little freshman at American, and I’m glad to read that you are participating as a LINK leader next school year to make the transition into high school for our upcoming freshmen a lot easier and less stressful (although, they can be brats on campus from time to time). The way you described the “preparation for the first day back” was SO relatable, from taking inventory of what to bring to school on the first day to curating the best outfit and overall look. Overall, I wholeheartedly agree that the first days of school are “almost characterized as a time of genuine excitement” for a “better year” compared to “every other year that has come before,” and to read this knowing that we will experience our last first day of high school next year is really bittersweet. Thank you Nichelle for this blog post, and thank you for all that you have written!
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