Commentary: Back to school, a mix of excitement and nostalgia

Few things have the ability to transport me back to my childhood quite the same as the end of summer vacation and the first days of school can.  

Even now, shopping for school supplies rates high on my list of favorite summertime activities.  The intoxicating aroma of a brand new eraser, ripping open a fresh package of college ruled paper and the delightful click of a mechanical pencil all send a shiver of anticipation through me.  

When I was in elementary school, my mother would always send me off to my first day of school with an apple for my teacher.  Perhaps a cliché and most certainly archaic practice, but my teachers were always charmed by it.  

There are times when I'm still tempted to do that, and bring an apple to each of my professors on the first day of a class.  But, unfortunately this isn't elementary school and things aren't that easy anymore. What was once just a simple thoughtful gesture could now be misconstrued as a thinly veiled attempt to win favor with faculty.  I am many things, but least among them, a brown-noser and lest I make the wrong impression, I've had to let go of the apple-giving tradition.

In the strange purgatory known as college, gone are the uncomplicated and carefree days of childhood when chief among your worries was making it onto the playground in time to get a good spot on the jungle gym during recess.     

For the majority of college students, the first day of school usually means getting settled in the dorms, and getting along with roommates, worries about finding parking, filling out last minute paperwork, attempting to crash classes that are already full and planning ahead for the weekend and the ubiquitous parties and bar-hopping.    

While I am plagued by these average college student worries, falling asleep at night with visions of late-add slips dancing through my head, the beginning of the school year also finds me wondering about more, shall we say, childish issues.  

Will I know anyone in my classes?  What if I don't like my teachers?  Who will I eat lunch with?

While college serves as a transition into adulthood, many students are afforded the unique opportunity to keep at least one foot firmly planted in childhood, or at least in adolescence.

Don't shirk on your duties and commitments.  Make sure you get your department chair's signature on your graduation application before the deadline passes, and, for the love of all that is holy, go to your classes and do the readings.  But it's not quite time to let all the crushing responsibilities and drudgeries of "real" adulthood get you down.

All this start-of-the school-year anxiety and nostalgia is especially poignant for me because this is my last chance.  As the beginning of my final semester approaches, I'm reminded to take full advantage of these last golden days before the sun sets on my education and all the unique situations and circumstances that being part of the microcosm of college life has afforded me.  I admit it, I'll miss those first-day-of-school jitters.