For some, these are the final hours of summer. It’s 10:13pm. Across the state hundreds of children are splayed out on their bedroom carpets, organizing their school materials into stacks, laying out the next day’s outfit, and then laying it out again.

For me the first day of school always required about the same preparation as a space-shuttle launch. Checklists were made, then misplaced. Experts (such as my sister) were consulted, then ignored. The weather had to be just right; a balmy, windless night was preferable, with few clouds. A storm or even a chill wind could easily derail the whole operation.

And despite all that I rarely slept. The night before 7th grade I kept myself awake for hours with a strange song about Mickey Mouse skipping like a broken record through my head. The next morning at 6:30 my body had to suddenly adjust to a transatlantic-like time shift. Night was now morning. Morning was afternoon. Afternoon was dead, along with its sweet, sweet trashy talk shows.

But what never occurred to me was the possibility that there was another group that took the change from summer to fall even harder than the kids. For all the anxiety and anticipation, going back to school is, for a child, an easily assimilated blip in the rhythm of life. For the teachers, it’s like an orchestral gong going off in a nursery.

Teachers, though they hide it well, look to the last day of school like a gambler looks to the slot-machine handle. It’s their ka-ching noise. The unimaginable reward they reap for nine months in the company of several dozen well-shaken soda-cans. Summer vacation.

For the rest of the adult world, accustomed to two or three or maybe four weeks of annual vacation, the very concept of a three-month break is hard to understand. How can you…but what about the…then who watches the students? But it’s true; most teachers – unless they work a summer job or are trapped in one of those insane year-round schools – get 12 solid weeks to do whatever they want with.

They may garden. They may not. They might travel, by train or yacht. They do the things working people must put aside until retirement, and they do them with even more gusto, knowing their retirement is only temporary.

Because then they have to go back. Pulled from the brink. A taste of the good life followed by a swift jerk on the chain of reality. Into the caves again, put on that hard-hat, breathe in that coal dust.

OK, it’s not that bad. Many teachers have the same feelings about going back to school as kids. Disappointment (summer went too fast) combined with anticipation (who’s going to be in my class?) and a fair bit of nerves (how do you do this, again?). My girlfriend is about to begin her first year of teaching, so she has good reason to feel nervous. But I’ve talked to several teachers, and most say they don’t sleep well the night before school starts.

Suggestions for preventing this have been varied. Some say go to bed early, other say late. Still more advise not trying to sleep at all; save yourself the trouble. A few cures have involved calming the nerves with coffee, tea, or a fermented beverage of one’s choosing.

I’m not sure which one works the best. My girlfriend, the night before her first, first day of teaching, seems to be sleeping soundly without the benefit of any of them. But then again, maybe she just doesn’t know what she’s in for.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 at 9:14 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.