Back to School

Back to school always puts me in the mood for classic rock. Real cheeseball stuff, like Rush: “Summer’s fading fast / night’s growing colder . . . ” Or Rod Stewart’s Maggie May: “It’s late September / and I really should be back at school.” The banalities of the lyrics, coupled with the way they’re etched into the subsconcious by the FM airwaves (this is car music, let’s face it no one listens to this at home) captures the texture of the days—an out of the body experience, as you put on the good clothes and the game face to meet the crush of official business pushing through the thick air of still still-summer days.

Calendars come to life, committees that have slept all summer long come to life. Requests for recommendations, requests to review an essay or advise a project. The Chronicle arrives, and for the first time in months it seems it’s full of must-read stuff. My favorite journal arrives. The blogosphere is alight with important conversations. I have time for none of them. I can feel the links falling through my fingers. I inject my own small dose of chaos into the moiling tendrils of my networks, pestering colleagues for dates on which they can commit to a symposium I’m organizing later this fall. My email lands in their boxes with too many others just like it, virtual hands reaching out to tug at the remote puppet strings of their dekstop calendars.

The parking garage, three quarters empty all summer, is suddenly full. There’s a line at Marathon deli, my favorite off-campus lunch spot. I make plans, I nod my head yes, I make commitments, I make promises. Yes I’ll do it, sure count me in. Sounds good, when do you need it by?

The first few days of a new semester are 24 hour cycles of that morning shower high when you feel like you can do anything.

Welcome back.