Since last week began the first week of school for most people, I'm sure everyone saw their social media feeds flooded with "last first day of school!" posts from all their senior friends - whether or not you're also a senior or not. I'm a senior and while I'm so happy for my other friends and myself, I really wasn't that hyped up and didn't understand why everyone else was either. Let me explain.
I'll start off by explaining my own situation that probably explains a lot of my feelings for it. First of all, I am an education major - well, I'm a theatre major, but that's just BSU semantics, the point is, I want to be a teacher when I'm done here. After I graduate in May, the following August/September while many of my other friends are living their bests adult lives and going to their 9 to 5s, I will also be living my best adult life but also going back to a school every day. That is my job. So I get to have another 40+ years of first days of school and I know each one will be more exciting than the last. Second, like many other majors, to get a raise and be better at what I do, I will have to return to college at some point for my Masters/Doctorate - haha, me getting a Doctorate, no thanks. I will officially be a student again at that point in my life, whenever my school and I decided that is best.
So, no it was definitely not my last first day of school.
The main reason I wasn't really hyped though was because of something I heard from a professor once. It went something along the lines of, "Learning something new every day is what makes life worth living." This went along with a discussion about how in our classrooms we'll find that our students are also teaching us as we teach them, but that's beside the point. The point is that if you didn't learn something new in a day, what was the point of the day. This doesn't have to be facts, of course, it could be something about life or about someone you know or learning a new skill or finding a new hobby or anything really. It can come from a book or a friend or just a bored Google search because you were curious. If you reflect at the end of every day and say to yourself, "What did I learn today?" you might be surprised that you learned more than you thought you had because at the moment you didn't know what was going on.
So while last week may have been your last first day of school as an institution, your new school is all around you. It's called life and it is the greatest, grandest school with almost eight billion people enrolled and you will hopefully be attended for quite a long time.
