Fuck Back-to-School

This is how I kicked its ass forever.

Stop what you’re doing and jump in, right now. There’s a golden land of awesome just over the horizon, and we’re getting the fuck outta here and not looking back.

I’m gonna show you how I beat the thick, sagging, navy-blue blues of back-to-school. Mine were worse than yours because I grew up in a place where summer lingered into late-October, followed swiftly by capitulation to the Big Rain, which lasted for nine fucking months. So going back to school in September was essentially throwing away a big and precious part of summer, and you’d have to wait forever for its return.

But there was something else in the mix, something that cut much deeper. Holy shit, it showed me who I am.

On a gorgeous September morning in 1990 I was standing at the bus stop, waiting to be picked up and delivered to the first day of Senior year. The air was warm and soft, but it was lost on me. I was gripped by the old familiar back-to-school feeling of heaviness, exhaustion and gut-deep dread.

I had never questioned this seasonal feeling. It seemed like a plainly obvious equation: school was starting and summer was ending, so I was sad. But right there at the bus stop, a new thought crept in. It was a wave too big to fight off, so I let it wash over me. I don’t fit well inside the school system!

I had to sit down on the curb and take some deep breaths. School had always been a struggle. There were classes where I excelled, Social Studies, Art, Choir and especially English class. But holy hell, math was a grinding torture, a hard slog up a steep mountain with no rest or relief. Teachers tried to explain explain explain, and I couldn’t understand, and it made me feel ashamed. I was sent to a tutor, who explained the exact same things only slower, which made no difference.

Eventually they sent me to an education “specialist”, who ran a series of inscrutable tests and determined that I had some sort of “learning issue.” Every year thereafter I was sent to summer school to swelter in stuffy-hot classrooms with other math victims. Again the same explanations, with no improvement. The best grade I ever got in any math class was a C-.

But that wasn’t all. When I stopped to think about it, my experience with the overall high school curriculum was choppy. Sometimes teachers made it seem like something was easy to learn, but I would need much more time to retain the information than we were given. Other times they stressed how hard it would be to process something, and I would learn it instantly and know it forever. This whiplash was exhausting. I approached each day in good faith, but it was hard to keep it up, and sometimes I just shut down. Thank god for the arts and humanities classes, which held up my grade point average. Without them I would surely have flunked out of high school.

What I now understand is that my story is far from unique. GenX didn’t get the benefit of the extensive educational testing that is now commonplace for young students. There are robust new metrics for child development, and scientific protocols for diagnosis, and suggested accommodations for students’ learning styles that educators and parents can provide. If someone had bothered to try teaching me math using music, for example, I might have done much better. For the record, I taught myself the mathematical times tables by making up a song about them, and I can still remember how it goes.

But that morning at the bus stop, all I knew was that I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, tolerate the same old back-to-school bullshit anymore. I resolved that after that final high school September, everything would be different. I slogged through the year as best I could, nursing my secret plans. Come April I threw away all the college catalogues and auditioned for a theater conservatory in New York City, and I got in. On my first day I knew I’d landed in the right place. The school day was filled with singing, dance, and acting classes, without a single math problem. I was immersed in the things I loved best, and I thrived and excelled, and it changed everything.

September used to bum me out, but now I think of it as an affirmation of what I am, though I don’t know what that is, exactly. Maybe “neurospicy”? In any case, it took years and years, but I’ve been able to create a life that just works. It’s not frictionless, but it’s the type of friction that enables solid growth. Sometimes I still have to engage with systems that I didn’t create myself, and I even went back to school this summer to get a professional certification. It was hard, but I know how to get what I need and get out of there. And baby, you can, too: don’t rely on external systems for validation. Don’t believe their hype! Find or create places where you can thrive, not just survive, and find others who have done the same. Learn from each other, and teach others how to do what you’ve done. Special shout-out to GenX, the one and only. Do what we’ve always had to do: stop struggling and be what you need.