Last week, you may have felt some of those familiar back-to-school feelings that I’ll do my best to recount here. Now, being a junior (the fun, easy grade), I may have no idea what stress in school is, but I’ll do my best to identify:

1. Denial

School? What school? You don’t have to worry about school. Only those try-hards who took Chem. over the summer have to. It’s, like, 72 hours away and that’s about 4,000 minutes! There’s also a summer reading assignment? 1200 pages, you say? Please! That’s only six hours if you sit down and do it. You’ll live! Heck, You’ll thrive! This may be the year that sends you to Harvard and it starts right now!

Wait, no. Tomorrow. It can wait until tomorrow.

2. False Hope

The continuation of denial. The last day of summer is winding down. You’re shopping and you’re enamored, seduced by those shiny, new school supplies. You start to picture a first day where every last person in your grade is going to line up, and high five you because they’ve missed you so much. You’re practically the crux of their lives! How’d they survive all summer? You don’t know but you’re now on the bus and, next thing you know, you’re going through the….

3. Overwhelming

You’ve just come to the realization that you have to do that whole first day thing tomorrow and all of the work that comes with it. Wait, work? At school? What is this?!  On top of all those homework assignments, you’ve forgotten everything. What even is the subjunctive? Who was Benjamin Harrison? While we’re at it, what even is a log2? I don’t know but that mounting level of work sure isn’t helping me figure it out. Then you figure out that pile of homework is made of the usual busywork and that’s when you move on to the…

4. Adaptation and Acceptance

Summer is long gone. Labor Day weekend may have teased you but you know it’s left. You may softly cry about it occasionally but you’ve come to the inevitable realization: school isn’t that bad. Once your body has rolled its wakeup time back by five hours and you’ve plowed through that first swell of work, you’ve become focused on the real goal: being the best dang student you can be.

That is, until June comes, of course.