Adult Back to School
Three Ways to Capture that New Backpack Feeling in Your Own Life
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It’s a highlight of the year: the picking-out-of-outfits, the buying of matching notebooks and pencil cases, the memorizing of schedules, the making of signs, and saying goodbye.
I’m not talking about children, of course; I’m talking about parents. And not in the way of that iconic Staples commercial from a few years back.
Surely the most underappreciated aspect of fall is the sheer nostalgia it evokes in adults. All the harkening back to childhood, the reliving of all that anticipation, the eternal gift of being granted a second chance to get it right.
“Don’t you love the fall?” Nora Ephron once wrote. “It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
Well, we don’t have Nora Ephron to send us bouquets anymore, so we’ll just have to do it ourselves. Here are three ways to capture that new backpack feeling in your own lives. I call it “Adult Back to School.”
1. That Perfect Mechanical Pencil
A few years back, the Canadian filmmaker Kathryn Kvas wrote a piece in The New Yorker that should earn her the Anti-Pulitzer Prize. It was called “Can All the Sad Adults Please Step Away from Our Back-School Display?”
“Hey there, Staples shoppers!” it began. “Just a super-friendly reminder to all you emotionally stunted adults still wondering where your childhood went: Could you kindly stand at least ten feet away from our back-to-school supplies display? You’re scaring the actual children.”
Clever? Yes. Good life advice? No!
Jump in, sad adults. Make yourself happy! Pick up a new spiral notebook; grab yourself some erasers that actually erase; buy that highly rated, slightly precious mechanical pencil from Japan, as I just did. Maybe you’d like the one decorated with Pokémon White Pikachu, as I did not.
One advantage of indulging in new school supplies: They don’t cost that much. Even an expensive mechanical pencil will usually set you back no more than $13.00. That’s less than a cocktail at most establishments in my neighborhood (don’t judge, non-Brooklynites). And the good feeling lasts waaaaay longer.
2. Pop Quiz
A beloved part of the fall ritual in our home is what my daughters call Dad Quizzes. When the girls receive their new schedules at orientation, they love nothing more than memorizing all the details -- the name of the class, the teacher, the room, the time, etc. Dad quizzes happen in the first weeks of school and are populated by serious like, “Which of your classes has the most commas in the title?” and “How many flights of stairs do you have to take before lunch on Thursday?”
Again, why should they have all the fun? [OK, I have fun with these, too.]
The growing science of routine has found that old habits are hard to break, but new ones are easy to make. Our brain elasticity extends far deeper into our lives than previously thought. The National Institutes of Health has found that you can make a new habit in as little as two or three weeks. So, now’s the time to adjust your schedule: Begin exercising before breakfast, put your phone away earlier at night, cut out that extra scoop of ice cream or glass of Scotch at bedtime.
Then ask someone around you to give you a quiz to hold you accountable.
3. The Book Club of You
As more and more of our lives take place on screens, a new book can feel like the most nostalgic act of all. Fortunately, back to school for most students means back to paper. A growing body of research shows that students of all ages, from elementary school to college, tend to absorb more when reading on paper than on screens, particularly when it comes to nonfiction material.
Even if your reading material can be scanned on a screen, “sometimes you should print it out, especially if it’s long,” said Virginia Clinton, from the University of North Dakota, who has conducted research in this area.
Most adults I know could benefit from this lesson. So this fall, join a book group; visit an actual bookstore, especially one that may have struggled during the pandemic; or, since anticipation is a big part of happiness, preorder a big fall title.
I recently took this advice after checking out this awesome Fall 2021 New Book List from Vulture. The book I ordered is titled The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by the extraordinary anthropologist David Graeber [Debt, Bullshit Jobs], who died soon after finishing this book at age 59.
Whatever you do this fall, don’t let the kids have all the fun! As Carol Burnett put it, “We don’t stop going to school when we graduate.” So why not go back to school ourselves whenever we have the chance?
HELPING FAMILIES TRANSITIONS TO FALL: Other Articles in This Series
Helping Families Transition to Fall – September 9
Adult Back to School – September 13
The Hardest Part of Forgiveness – September 15
Three Questions to Ask Your Children Every Week - September 17
The Three Most Important Things to Say to Someone in a Life Crisis - September 20
You’re In an Autobiographical Occasion. Now What? – September 22
The Noticing Game – September 24
'The New Normal:' The Problem with Everyone's Favorite Phrase – September 27
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Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, or scroll through my other posts.
You might enjoy reading these posts:
Helping Families Transition Fall
How 9/11 Transformed Interfaith Relations
A Fun & Easy Family Transition
Or these books: Life Is in the Transitions, The Secrets of Happy Families, Council of Dads.
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