My backpack still has a half-eaten granola bar from last semester and that’s how back to school feels
I woke up this morning at 7:17, four snoozes past the 7:00 alarm I set with so much ambition on Sunday. I spent all August bragging to anyone who’d listen that I was gonna get back into a routine: morning walks, green smoothies, all that stuff I did for two weeks in July before I got bored and went back to scrolling TikTok till 1am. Today I tripped over my rain boot that’s been sitting by the door since the end of last semester, spilled half my coffee on my favorite oversized flannel, and realized I’d put my shirt on inside out before I even got out the door. That’s the first sign, I think. This isn’t the curated first day you see on Instagram. This is the messy, half-forgotten version.
Walking across campus, I ran into Dr. Henderson, the bio prof I begged for a 48-hour extension on my final paper back in May. I’d emailed him three times in two days, left a voicemail that I still cringe thinking about, and when I saw him holding an iced matcha latte outside the admin building, my brain went completely blank. I didn’t remember his name. All I could think was he has a drink, say something about the drink. So I blurted “That coffee looks really good!” and then stood there blinking while he squinted at me, trying to place who I was. I mumbled something about having his class two semesters ago and booked it before he could ask me anything else. My face was still hot when I got to my first lecture.
The lecture hall was exactly how I remembered it: those sticky molded plastic seats that cling to your thighs if you wear shorts, the faint smell of old popcorn and cheap body spray, a kid in the front row already has three different colored pens laid out like he’s about to perform surgery. I pulled out my laptop to type my notes and it died right as the professor started talking. I’d forgotten to charge it after binging the last season of Succession till 1:30 last night. I sat there for 50 minutes scribbling in my new dotted notebook that I spent $12 on at the campus bookstore last week, trying to read the professor’s messy slides over the shoulder of the guy in front of me. The kid next to me had a sticker that said “I <3 Mycorrhizae” and chewed gum so loud I could feel the vibration through the shared armrest. I couldn’t tell you a single thing the professor said, actually. I was too busy trying not to laugh at the sticker and too busy panicking about all the readings I have to do this week.
I spent all summer bored out of my mind, working 30 hours a week at the coffee shop downtown, folding napkins and wiping down tables and listening to the same 10 regulars complain about the temperature of their oat lattes. I counted down the days to move-in, kept crossing them off on my kitchen calendar, texted my roommate every other day about how excited I was to be done with folding napkins. Now I’m here, and half of me keeps reaching for my phone to text my old coworker Lila about the weird guy who asked for 10 extra sugars in his cold brew, but Lila quit last month and moved to Portland to do farm work or something, and she doesn’t reply much anymore. I still have my dorky “Bean There, Drink That” name tag pinned to my bulletin board above my desk, right next to my printed class schedule. It feels weird, holding two versions of your life at once.
After lecture, I went to the dining hall for lunch. I swiped my student ID three times and it kept coming up invalid. I stood there, holding a tray with a sad salad and a chocolate chip cookie, while the line of hungry freshmen piled up behind me, and I could feel everyone staring. The cashier had to type in my student number manually, and she made a joke about me being too excited to get back and forget to get my ID activated, and I laughed but I wanted to crawl into the walk-in freezer. I ate my cookie at a table by myself and watched a group of freshmen introduce themselves to each other, writing their majors on sticky name tags, and I remembered doing that my first year, and it felt so big and scary and exciting back then. Now it just feels like another Tuesday, almost.
I’m sitting on a weathered bench outside the humanities building now, between my next two classes. There’s a hole in the toe of my left sock because I grabbed the first pair I found this morning, and that half-eaten granola bar I found in my backpack when I was looking for a pen is crumbly in my pocket. I fished it out earlier and it only had one little ant on it, so I didn’t throw it away. Old habits die hard when you’re a broke college student; you don’t throw out food that’s only slightly wrong. Some kids are playing frisbee on the lawn over there, and one just threw it straight into a rose bush, and everyone laughed so hard they fell into the grass. That made me smile for a minute, before I remembered I have a stats problem set due Friday I haven’t even opened the textbook for yet.
People keep talking about back to school like it’s this fresh start, a blank page, all new goals and a new you. I get that, I guess. I bought new pens, I have that nice new notebook, I’m genuinely excited for my plant ecology lab next week where I get to go out and collect leaves and identify them— that’s the whole reason I picked my major, after all. But it also doesn’t feel like a blank page. It feels like a page that already has half a story on it, with smudges and old notes and a coffee stain in the corner. I’m still the same person who forgot to charge her laptop, who forgets profs’ names, who still misses folding napkins sometimes even when it was boring.
I thought it would feel like jumping into a cold lake, shocking at first but then you get used to it. It feels more like putting on an old sweater that I loved last year, that I missed all summer, but it’s a little too tight across the shoulders now. I grew a little over the break, I guess. It doesn’t fit quite right, but it’s still warm. I’m still adjusting the sleeves. I don’t know if I ever will, really. That’s just how it is, I think: granola crumbs in the backpack, sticky lecture seats, awkward run-ins with profs and all. It’s not perfect. It’s just back.
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