The Backpack Smell And Other Unwelcome Back-To-School Ghosts
I dug my old backpack out of the back of my hall closet yesterday afternoon, in preparation for today—my first day back after a year off working full time. I unzipped it and was hit with this smell that I can only describe as late fall 2022: half-eaten peanut butter granola bar, old lemon wet wipe, the faint chalk dust from the art building stairwell. I rooted around and found a crumpled bodega receipt dated March 14, a single earbud that stopped working last year, and a pressed four-leaf clover my friend gave me before my final thesis draft. I almost threw the receipt away, then I stuck it back in the side pocket. Don’t know why. That’s the kind of thing you do when you’re not ready to start over completely, I guess.
I got up an hour earlier than I needed to this morning, because my body still thinks it’s supposed to commute to an office, even though I only have one 9am class today. I put on new jeans I bought last week, because all my old jeans have that stretched-out waistband from a year of working from home, and I forgot how much real non-stretchy jeans dig into your hips when you sit for an hour and a half. By the time I walked to campus, my lower back was already sore, and I was tempted to just turn around and go home, climb back into bed, and finish the bad reality TV binge I started over the summer.
I got to the lecture hall 10 minutes early, and I stood in the back for three full minutes just staring, because I forgot how unwritten the rules of picking a seat are. All the front rows are empty, obviously—no one wants the professor calling on them out of nowhere. All the middle rows are taken by groups of people who clearly had classes together last semester, already laughing and sharing AirPods. I almost just sat in the very back, but the back row has the kids that skip half the semester and scroll TikTok the whole time, and I paid $1200 for this class. I don’t want to be that person. I ended up squeezing into the only empty middle spot, between a girl who was filing her nails the whole time and a guy who brought a whole iced coffee from the fancy shop off campus and kept slurping it loud enough that I couldn’t hear the first 10 minutes of the syllabus. It’s fine. It’s just… awkward.
When we got the 10-minute break halfway through, I went to get a bottle of water from the vending machine down the hall. The Cheetos button is still stuck, same as it was when I was here two years ago. Someone taped a handwritten note over it that says “DO NOT PUSH CHEETOS IT STEALS YOUR MONEY” and the tape is yellowed at the edges, like it’s been there for years. I pushed the water button, got my water, and noticed the note was signed “Jake 2019”. Jake’s probably graduated already, out working a real job somewhere, still protecting random strangers from the stuck Cheetos button. That’s the thing about school, right? You leave little pieces of yourself everywhere, and other people leave little pieces for you, even if you never meet.
After class, the girl next to me (the one filing her nails) said she also thought the professor assigned way too much reading for the first week, and I agreed, and then I asked if she wanted to swap Instagrams so we can remind each other when assignments are due. I typed her name wrong, misspelled the first part, and sent the request to some random girl in Florida who posts mostly beach photos. I haven’t gotten a request back from the right one yet, and I’ve checked my phone 17 times since I left class. It’s stupid, but it’s the kind of stupid small thing that feels huge on the first day.
I quit my full time office job because I was so bored, so unhappy, I kept complaining that I missed learning, I missed the chaos of campus, that I was wasting my days answering emails about printer ink. But today, during lecture, I caught myself checking my old work email three times. I even answered a text from my old boss asking where I saved the Q3 spreadsheet, right there in the middle of a talk about 19th century poetry. I’m not all here yet. Part of me is still stuck in that tiny office cubicle, waiting for the 5pm bell to ring. It doesn’t feel like a fresh start, like all the back-to-school Instagram posts say it should. It feels like picking up a book you put down a year ago, and you can’t remember what chapter you were on, and the bookmark fell out somewhere, and you have to just flip through until you find your place again.
On my walk back to the bus stop, I passed the quad, and there was a group of freshmen sitting on a blanket, all carrying those big student orientation lanyards, passing around a bottle of seltzer, talking about which dorms are the best. I stood at the crosswalk waiting for the light, and I didn’t feel that sappy “oh I remember when I was that young” thing, not really. I just thought, none of them are going to remember this day in 10 years, not really. They think this is the big starting line, but it’s just another day, same as all the rest. Not that that’s bad. It’s just… true.
I got home an hour ago, took off the jeans, threw my backpack by the door, and ordered a pizza that’s going to get here in 10 minutes. I have a blister on my left heel from the new sneakers I bought because I threw all my old campus sneakers away over the summer. I still can’t believe I actually did this, quit my job, came back. Some parts of me still want to call the registrar and drop all my classes tomorrow, go beg for my old job back. Other parts of me are glad I’m here, even if it’s awkward, even if it doesn’t feel like the big beautiful adventure I thought it would be. It just feels like… going back. The smell of the backpack, the stuck vending machine button, the pending Instagram request, the blister. That’s all it is. I don’t need it to be anything more right now. (Word count: 1182)
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