An Artists' Colony: The Back to School Blues

Labor Day has passed. Fall, such as it is in Southern California, is creeping in on us. It’s time to get back to work, to get serious. School is starting, and it’s time to head back to class. It’s time to stock up on new pens and pencils and notebooks, read through the syllabi, pile up the books, and get serious about time management. New classes, new teachers, new faces, new ideas, and new problems to unravel.

But wait, I’m not heading back to school. In fact, I think I might be missing the whole experience. It’s been so long since I was enrolled in any institute of academic excellence that I’m not even sure if it all still works the same.

Do students even have to take notes anymore or do they just record everything on their smartphones? I’m sure phones can do that. But I’m not sure how, since my smart phone seems to be a lot smarter than me.

I don’t have children so I live vicariously through them. I have to rely on my brothers who are still in college to challenge me with frustrating and circular philosophical discussions. Don’t tell my brother Jake but I actually love editing his papers for him because I learn something new. A double major in economics and world religious studies makes for some very interesting reading. And it has been a huge blow to my ego to watch my other brother Nicholas tackle a degree in philosophy and absolutely dwarf my intellect and powers of critical thinking and creative reasoning.

And then I look to friends who have young kids in school or a certain dizzingly enthusiastic teacher I know for that dose of wonder and joy that can come to a child as the whole world begins to crackle open before them.

In my other career at a Los Angeles nonprofit, I just headed up a Back to School Day event aimed at getting several hundred foster children and other high risk kids outfitted with new backpacks and school supplies. Some of my colleagues get much more excited about our Christmas toy drive, but this is the event that keeps me invested in these kids’ futures. Because they tell us just how excited they are that they will be ready now to do all their work and learn a lot.

Yes, I miss it. I miss school. Let’s be clear. I actually miss being in class and rising to the challenge of making the grade. No surprise I was a teacher’s pet because I loved the teachers because they were
the ones who kept giving me all this startling new information. And I was good at it. Actually going back to school, into the lions’ den of social awkwardness, each year caused me terror and anxiety. But it didn’t matter once I started reading and writing. (The arithmetic and I never got along.) I didn’t really get good at putting the whole social/academic  package together until sometime late in college and graduate school where it all made so much more sense to me because
you were there with other people who were choosing to be there and continue learning.

In fact, the last time I was in school was ten years ago in Washington, D.C. at American University in a graduate program in international
relations surrounded by an amazingly intelligent, thoughtful and diverse group of faculty and students from around the world. So when people talk about this past auspicious weekend it brings up two years of memories of the knowledge I gained and the worldviews and perspectives that I was challenged to consider that made all the difference in dealing with those very terrifying days.

Yes I miss school. But honestly I’m not sure what I would study at this point in my life and career. My friend Debra told me this summer
that she is considering getting her Ph.D. because she misses it, too.

She wants another challenge; she wants to learn more. And I’m sure she will eventually. And I will be a little jealous. But will I be ready to meet the challenge?