Back to School It Is.
BY KARDELEN KALA (TRIN/I)
kala@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
I'll set the scene: One hot September morning in İzmir, in 1997, my mother wakes me up at 7 a.m. for breakfast. I hate having to get up so early, though I'm also secretly excited. I am roughly seven years old and about to start first grade. Sleep in my eyes, still tanned from the long, carefree summer vacation, I pose for several pictures with my parents and grandmother. I know this "school thing" is a big deal, but I have no idea what lies in store for me. Kids don't really realize what they're getting into when they start school. If they did, their parents would have an even harder time getting them out of bed each morning.
My first day of school was simply a day from hell. There isn't any other way of putting it, really. I
wasn't used to the uniform, and I came to hate it during the course of that very same day. (Strangely enough, I've never changed my mind about the school uniform. I find it to be useless -- a frightening exercise of unnecessary discipline and a slap in the face of originality. That, however, is an entirely different subject.) It was stifling hot in the classroom, and I distinctly remember having what I now think was a panic attack. All in all, it wasn't an ideal first day of school for me.
Fast forward to September 25, 2011, the day before the first day of school, and you'll find the 20-year-old me sitting at my desk, putting together my first article of the year. (I apologize if I'm a little rusty, for I haven't written anything in months; my intellectual activity over the summer wasn't anything to write home about, I'm afraid. I did spend a month in France, which I definitely am going to write about, but I feel like that story deserves to wait until my mind is in better shape.) My parents aren't here to wake me up and fix me breakfast. Nobody has done that in years. I won't feel anything much different tomorrow morning, except some resentment at having to wake up early, of course. The workload and the exams will scare me to some degree, because I am a worrier, but I won't break down and cry like I used to in, say, the second grade. It's a completely different experience from the one I used to have every year throughout elementary and middle school. Something has changed. Something so obvious, yet so hard to understand is truly different now. It's so simple, yet so complicated at the same time…
I've grown up. It's really that simple. What used to be huge for me has lost its importance, and new stuff has appeared in its place. I'm not sure that I always I like it, but it's impossible to deny or ignore. We all grow up. Our worries and priorities change. Whatever is in our heads right now, regardless of how old we are, will also come to seem insignificant and maybe even stupid in retrospect. This can be a very liberating revelation if understood and used correctly. So I say, let us be happy, be sad, be human. Let us enjoy our new year here at Bilkent, with old friends and new ones; academically and socially. Let us not beat ourselves up if things don't always go our way.
Now, if only I could keep my own advice… I tend not to.