Aaron Moran in: The return to campus...matriculate harder!

     The temperatures may still be soaring but summer has definitely come to end. Don't believe it? Take a look at the children in your neighborhood. They know. They're walking around stoop-backed and slump-shouldered, with an aggrieved scowl on their faces. Actually, you can't look at them, because they aren't walking around the neighborhood. They're back in school, that's why they're stoop-backed and slump-shouldered and scowling. If you do see any scowling kids skulking around your neighborhood, be sure to call a truant officer; they're supposed to be in school.
     I am returning to school this semester myself, and, while it is college and I need not fear the truant officer, the emotional freight that the end of summer carries has not changed since I was a child, facing my first day of kindergarten.
     Despite having a couple of years of college already behind me, the nights leading up to the first day of school are marked by nightmares of being either lost on campus, or late to class or without a homework assignment. You would think that I would outgrow these types of dreams, but I get them - like clockwork - at the onset of every new semester.  I've been attending college for so long now that I know the form numbers of the different types of Scantron sheets better than the professors do.
     I'm almost grateful that my subconscious mind can still muster such a primal sense of dread about school. My wakeful mind is getting pretty bored with it. A new semester is more hassle than horror. The first day of school may be a nightmare, but it is a nightmare like a day at the DMV is a nightmare; not a nightmare like falling off a cliff or being attacked by monsters nightmare. My academic track is becoming a rut.
     To a student pushing through the middle of his or her degree, a sophomore or a junior, each new semester is a rebirth of the one before it. Life imitates art; and that art is the movie Ground Hog's Day.
     we old pros know that sooner or later the first week of classes will be behind us. The crowds and chaos on the campus will calm down. The traffic will ebb away, and the bookstore will once again be deserted. Until then I shall endeavor to embrace and even enjoy the nervous bustle; if nothing else it shakes up the monotony.